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A WORD OF Suffering

Echoes from Calvary, Part 5

March 25, 2007 – Fifth Sunday in Lent

Lake Grove Presbyterian Church

Lutangu Lubasi, guest from Zambia, with Pastor Graig Flach

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Introduction  -  Pastor Graig

On this fifth Sunday of the Lenten season we continue to linger with the Lord at the cross, experiencing His last words before He dies.  This morning we hear “A Word of Suffering” as our Lord expresses His thirst.  Methodist preacher Wil Willamon says, “God’s in this fix, on this day, because God’s so thirsty for us.” Jesus has willingly come to this point because He loves us.

That suffering remains relevant even today, not only because of the redemption we experience because of it, but because Scripture encourages us to participate in the Lord’s suffering (e.g. Romans 8:17).  We can still do that even 2000 years after the fact, especially by participating in the suffering of Christ’s body, the church (1 Corinthians 12:26).  In Zambia, our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ are in Sinazongwe, where Lutangu Lubasi serves them with World Vision. 

In a wonderful collection of sermons and reflections called Echoes from Calvary , which complements the music Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ, theologian Grover Zinn writes: “ ‘I thirst’ – words from the Cross; words heard in the midst of drought-stricken lands, in the poverty of inner cities, in the midst of wars.  ‘I thirst’ – words of spiritual emptiness heard in urban centers, in green groves, and on barren plains.  Perhaps our greatest challenge is to find the deep wells of physical and spiritual nourishment that will slake the thirst of a wounded and weary world.”

Today’s world is indeed wounded, and it may be weary, but right now we are with Jesus, on the cross, and He is hurting.  The end is near.  His body is about to give out.  His previous words have included a consciousness of others, but now he simply expresses his own physical suffering. 

There is a spiritual dimension to this, one we will explore with the help of our brother Lutangu, from whom I think we may catch a glimpse of hope in the midst of suffering… hope that is possible because of the suffering our Lord endured on the cross. 

Lutangu, thank you for spending time with us, and for sharing your insights and your heart with us today.

Lutangu Lubasi on Lake Grove’s Zambian Partnership 

Hello.  Thank you for that wonderful African music.  The rhythms made me feel very… African!  Very energizing.  About a year ago, just when I went to Sinazongwe, one of the American movie stars visited Sinazongwe. It must have been the gentleman called Matt Damon.  So, he was escorted by his brother and a big white man who was just hanging around him… I assumed he was from Lake Grove Presbyterian Church!  No, I did not know about Lake Grove then, but I decided to engage this man because I assumed he was an American.  So I said, “Well, which part of the United States do you come from?”  He said, “No, I am not from the states, I am from South Africa – I am an African like you.”  So I was wondering about our two brothers on the drums – they handled the rhythms so well – before I begin to assume they are Americans…  I have to be very careful.  They may be Africans!

Thank you so much.

Let me begin by saying that I am very, very thankful for this wonderful opportunity you have given us as a church, inviting us, myself and my wife, to be here.  It has been a wonderful week.  We have met many wonderful people.  I was saying this morning that when I first met Pastor Bob and Graig and the Lake Grove Team it was a life-changing experience for me.  They were such wonderful people.  They obviously loved the Lord and that touched me in a very, very deep way – in a very, very special way –- and I looked forward to meeting them again.  And I thank God I have been able to do that. But I always wondered what sort of a congregation they led.  I assumed it must be a very good congregation, and I think so far I have not been disappointed.  Thank you very much for being brothers and sisters in Christ.  We have felt very welcome as we’ve been here.  We’ve felt very well treated.  It has just been life-changing.  It has just been wonderful.  It has just been so good to us, so thank you very much. 

As you’ve heard, my name is Lutangu, and I am the regional World Vision manager for Sinazongwe.  I have 40 staff who work with me.  And I just like to thank all of you here that sponsor children, and you collectively as a church, for the partnership that you have with us in sponsoring children, in providing money to village partnerships, water projects, Makonkoto School, and many of these projects that you make it possible for us to do.  I’d like to let you know that actually what you are doing is tremendous.  You are changing lives.  Lives are being impacted.  When you sponsor a child you enable us to make sure that child is given future and a hope.  We send them to school, we make sure their health is taken care of, and also we ensure that they are exposed to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through strengthening pastors and churches, through establishment of groups like the Scripture Union and Good News Clubs your children are having that hope of having life in its fullness, and you make it possible for us to make it happen.  I’d like to say that this is happening against a background of very severe and extreme poverty.  You are talking about 80 percent of our people living in poverty.  To say it is just poverty is not good enough; you need to say abject poverty, extreme poverty.  That is the reality on the ground, and 60 percent would live under that sort of description.  We also know that the life expectancy is just about 37 years old.  This, again, has been exacerbated by the HIV pandemic, which is 16 percent in our country.  It has improved from 21 percent down to 16 percent over the years, but that is not good enough.  We’d like it to go really down. 

I will talk about a friend of ours we met on the go-team that came to Lusaka, that is Russ Brown.  I just enjoy listening to him, because he has been twice to Sinazongwe.  And he compares the first time that he went to Sinazongwe and the last time he went to Sinazongwe.  And he would say to me, “When we first went to Sinazongwe, there were no boreholes, no goats, and they didn’t have any chickens.  This community just didn’t have anything.”  But he says, “When you go there today you see goats and they are multiplying.  You see chickens.  You see boreholes.  Children have drinking water; communities have drinking water.”  Before this they had to walk many miles, sometimes three miles with a container on their head, 20 liters, walking three miles back and forth to get water which may not even be clean and safe.  But because of what you are doing today our children, particularly the girl children, are able to get water within less than 500 meters, perhaps, and it is clean and safe.  Because of that the children are able to go back to school.  Because of that women are able to engage in other productive activities such as micro-enterprise development, they are able to grow vegetables.  Things are happening, and it is because of the partnership that you have with us. 

Makonkoto School is another one.  There are many projects – I don’t have the time to share everything – just a few highlights here and there.  Once the school is done we expect that in this area Sinazongwe which does not have a high school, we expect this school to be turned into a high school because the nearest high school is in Maamba, some 30 miles from Sinazongwe.  The alternative is for them to go to the next towns, where they will be able to be in boarding schools, and that is very expensive for them.  Some of them will not manage, so they just have to drop out of school, and if they are girl children some of the parents will use this as an easy excuse to marry them off.  At ages of 14, 15, they marry them off.  But when there is a school we have every reason to fight for these children and get them into school and in the process also to get them to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, giving them a future and a hope.  That is what you are doing as a church and as individuals, as a partner with us in sponsoring children. 

When we came this morning we had still just over 40 children not sponsored.  I think now we are down to nine.  Nine children remaining.  The other services have been taking children to sponsor, to make a difference in their lives.  There are still nine children not sponsored.  Graig is going to say something about that.  But we definitely hope that by the time we are said and done, those children will be gone and I will be a very happy man. 

But let me say that your sending teams to Sinazongwe, your coming to Sinazongwe is a demonstration of God’s love, just as much as your giving.  You could give all the reasons why you should just ignore all this suffering – you are a different race, you are on a different continent, we are separated by miles and miles of ocean.  It takes God’s love.  It communicates God’s love for you to cross land and ocean, to reach out to one child by giving and by visiting.  I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much, those of you that are sponsoring children, thank you very much to all of you as a church for the passion that you have for our people who are not as privileged. You are like an answer to the prayers of the people of Sinazongwe, and I hope you will maintain your commitment until our program is completed in 2013.

Lutangu proclaims God’s Word from John 19:28-30a

I’d like to turn to the Word of God just now.  We are looking at John chapter 19, verses 28 and 29.  I’m reading from the King James Version. 

“After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished that the scriptures might be fulfilled, sayeth, I thirst.  Now there was sent a vessel full of vinegar and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon hyssop and put it to his mouth.  When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.” 

We concentrate on the first two verses we have read, and I just have to make a point here that the suffering and death of Christ is very well highlighted in scripture, both in the Old Testament by the prophets, as well as the Gospel writers and the writers of the Epistles.  We know very little about the death of Paul, or of Peter, or any of the apostles.  Very little is known of their death.  Tradition holds that Peter was crucified in Rome, and feeling unworthy to die the same way that Christ died on the cross, he requested that he might be crucified upside-down.  But invariably the prophets, the gospel writers, and the writers of the epistles give us significant attention and detail to the suffering and death of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  They are almost saying to us, Listen, this is important.  The suffering of Christ is important.  The death of Christ is important.  The amount of time and effort and emphasis is meant to draw our attention to how important this event is.  They want to draw our attention to the fact that Christ’s suffering and death is not an accident – that Christ suffered and died in fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures, that we might be saved.  He was broken and suffered anguish, and every imaginable pain, among them hunger and thirst, that we might be saved, that we might be made whole, and that we might be made righteous. 

In these two verses we are considering this morning, John draws our attention for the first time to Christ’s personal suffering.  Up until this point Christ has been concerned about other people.  He prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” and assuring the thief on his right, he said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  And speaking to the apostle John, he turns his mother Mary to him, and says, “This is now your mother.”  And so up to this point he was really concerned about other people.  And now for the first time, Christ is beginning to express his own anguish, his own pain.  It is very clear now that his blood has been flowing for a couple of ours.  He is in pain; he is dehydrated. His life is slowly oozing away.  And in this moment Christ cries out, “I thirst.”  John is very quick to draw our attention to the fact that this thirsting was a fulfillment of scripture, just confirming what I am talking about, that Christ’s suffering and death were not an accident.  His death was not a tragedy, but it was prophesied that Christ would die, Christ would suffer, and he would do that, not as an accident, but he would do it to save our lives.  His suffering and death was part of God’s plan, and now God was fulfilling those plans to save mankind. 

John is drawing our attention to the fact that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God – to the fact that he had come to bring salvation and eternal life, and that was the reason why he had to die – that he was the fountain of living water, the river of life itself, God’s cistern to quench every man’s thirst, so that we should not thirst again.  That same man, who was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, now hung on that cruel cross and he was crying, “I thirst.”  Brothers and sisters, Christ had to suffer, he had to partake of our common humanity and identify with us, not only in his life, but also in his death.  He partook of our humanity and suffering in order to redeem us to the uttermost, and this is the reason that Christ is able to fulfill our every need; this is why he is able to represent us as our high priest before God.  He understands our humanness; he understands our weakness, for he was tempted at every point, yet without sin. 

Many today are turning to the broken cisterns of eastern religion, to alcoholism, to drug addiction, to all sorts of pleasures, sex addictions, all in search of meaning and happiness.  Their search continues in vain and their desires remain unfulfilled because they are looking in the wrong direction to the broken cisterns which do not satisfy.  But Christ hung on that cross, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, our priest and advocate, our mediator, the River of Life, the Fountain of Living Waters, who is able to save to the uttermost and is able to give us abundant life, eternal life, and is able to satisfy our desires, the desires of our souls, and give us meaning and direction to our lives – if we turn to him, that is.  I know many of us in one way or the other are suffering.  My people back home in Zambia, and specifically in Sinazongwe, are suffering in one way or the other, many because of lack of clean water leading to disease, and they have to suffer death because of curable diseases, and because of HIV and AIDS.  One would think that this is a God-forsaken place, but God, in his mercy, continues to show his love; and God understands what it means to be in poverty, in lack, only because he became a human being.  People turn to Christ and love him, even in that deep poverty, because we have one savior who is able to understand, because he was a human being and he was born into a poor family and he can understand poverty, and he calls upon us this day to call upon him, even in our suffering, to recognize that he understands.  I know also here in America, you suffer in various ways.  As human beings you experience death, sickness, and a whole variety of ways in which you may experience suffering.  And sometimes when we go through deep suffering we think of ourselves as if God has forsaken us and that God does not understand. But Christ had to die on that cross so that we can understand that no matter what we are going through, no matter our weakness, Christ actually experienced it all; Christ understands when you are suffering. 

And I’d like to conclude by saying Christ invites you today, as the River of Life, the Cistern and the Fountain of Living Water, to come to him, just in case you’ve never accepted him as your Lord and Savior.  Maybe you’ve never committed your life to him.  He gives you an opportunity today to turn to him and he will satisfy your every need, your every desire, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Pastor Graig Responds

Thank you so much for these words of encouragement and of challenge.  I believe with all my heart that God connected Lake Grove with Sinazongwe because of suffering… that we in Lake Grove, who barely know physical suffering, might participate in the suffering of our partners there and thereby in our Lord’s suffering.  The burdens we bear in our respective lands are different, but we can mutually bear them together. (Lifts up a crown of thorns). This crown of thorns was made for me by one of your staff members, Ackwell, in Siabaswi two years ago. Actually he made two of them. One is in your office in Sinazongwe, one is here in my office. Whenever we look at them, let us think of one another, and share each other’s burdens, and pray for one another to the One Who wore this crown on our behalf.

Regarding your requests, I believe our congregation is eager to take up the challenge of maintaining our commitment to Sinazongwe through the life of the World Vision program that ends in 2013.  We will strategize with you about exactly what that looks like, but I can tell you this: God has clearly touched the heart of this congregation with regard to clean water, as we have shown repeatedly over the last dozen years.  We will continue that work.  And with about 200 Sinazongwe children sponsored by our church family -- a number that may rise to 250 because of your visit – we have a vested interest in the success of the program.  We are committed not only to see that the entire region has access to clean water, but that sustainable development in other areas, as well: AIDS prevention, micro-economic development, food security, health care… and strong churches that continue to proclaim and live out the gospel.  It is this holistic approach that excites us, along with your commitment to “work yourself out of a job” by helping the local people become more self-sufficient, even as we all understand our mutual dependence on God. 

Lutangu, I have learned that your last name means “family” in the Zambian tongue of Lozi. I am blessed to be part of your “lubasi”, our Lord’s family. Thank you for your ministry and for your commitment to the people of Sinazongwe, especially the children.  Please take the greetings of our congregation back to your staff and to the residents of Sinazongwe, and tell them we are with them as they move forward with confidence in God’s providential guidance, toward a future with hope.  God bless you.

1. Thank God It’s Friday, Abingdon, 2006, p.59.
2. Echoes from Calvary, Meditations on Franz Josef Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, Richard Young, ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
3. Retired religion professor from Oberlin.