Good morning. It is a joy to be with you today and I bring greetings from the
Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo and the churches throughout the
Middle East who worship our God in the language of Arabic. Thank you for the
partnership that you have given my wife and I in the work that we're doing at
the seminary in our teaching. We're grateful for your partnership with us
and we we thank God for all that is happening here in Palms. So join me in
prayer now. Gracious God, bring your Holy Spirit that our minds might
comprehend the words of your scripture and our hearts might be moved that we
might be able to act them out in the world today. In Jesus' precious name, amen.
Our reading today is from 2nd Kings chapter 6 starting at verse 10.
Hear the word of the Lord. The king of Israel sent word to a place of which the
man of God spoke. More than once or twice he warned such a place so that it was
on alert. The mind of the king of Aram was greatly
perturbed because of this. He called his officers and said to them, now tell me
who among us sides with the king of Israel. One of his officers said, no one, my
Lord King, it is Elisha, the prophet in Israel who tells the king of Israel the
words that you speak in your bedchamber. He said, go and find where he is
I will send and seize him. He was told he's in Dothan. He sent horses and
chariots there and a great army that came at night and surrounded the city.
When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an
army with horses and chariots was all around the city. His servant said, alas
master, what shall we do? He replied, do not be afraid for there are more with us
than are with them. Then Elisha prayed, oh Lord please open his eyes that he may
see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant and he saw the mountain was full
of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. When the army our amians
came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, strike this people
please with blindness. So he struck them with blindness as Elisha had prayed.
Elisha said to them, this is not the way and this is not the city. Follow me, I
will bring you to the man whom you seek and he led them to Samaria. As soon as
they had entered Samaria, Elisha said, oh Lord open the eyes of these men so that
they may see. The Lord opened their eyes and they saw that they were
inside Samaria. When the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, father shall
I kill them, shall I kill them? He answered, no. Did you capture with your
sword or your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so
that they may eat and drink and let them go to their master. So he prepared for
them a great feast. After they ate and drank, he sent them on their way and they
went to their master and the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of
Israel. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So the old axiom goes
that seeing is believing, but we've all had experiences where we've seen
something and then interpreted what we've seen entirely incorrectly. For
example, the tragic part of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet hinges on the fact
that Romeo sees and believes incorrectly that Juliet has died when in fact the
friar gave her a potion that would make her sleep two and forty hours. Sorry,
spoiler alert. Just kidding. Our passage today shows us just how easy it is either
to fail to see something or to see it but see it wrongly. Elisha does three
things that are instructive for us today as we seek to see and believe as
followers of God. First, he observes the reality around him and he names it
properly. Second, and most importantly, he sets this reality into the larger
context of God's love and power. And finally, he responds to that reality with
hope, courage, and compassion. Elisha is God's prophet and he has been steadily
thwarting the Aramean king's plans of capturing Israel's army. Things go so,
get so bad because when the king sends the, excuse me, so the Aramean king is
trying to track down the Israeli army and they can't find him because each time
Elisha as a prophet says no, go to this city, go to this city in order for them
to get away. And the Aramean king gets so mad about it that he sends horses and
chariots and a great army to take care of one pesky prophet. The scene, the next
scene, feels to me like it was just made for the movies. Elisha's servant rises in
the morning, opens the shutters and shutters with fear. The city of Dothan
is surrounded by a hostile army. The servant's next line is one of those that
echoes Apollo 13. Houston, we have a problem. He says, Alas, master, what
shall we do? The Aramean army really is out there. It's big and it's dangerous
and it's completely surrounding them. At no point does Elisha dismiss this
reality as a threat. It's a real threat and he is not just whistling in the dark.
Like the Christian tradition after him, Elisha takes the dangers of this world
seriously. Sin, evil and brokenness are real and truly terrifying. In Egypt today,
we have some real problems for the country generally and the Christian
population specifically. Metaphorically, it can feel like we are under siege and
surrounded by forces far more powerful than we are. It is the, it's been a
really, really awful quarter of a century during the time that we've been
there in many, many ways. Let me run through some of the things that we have
had the privilege of walking with Egyptian Christians through over the last
25 years. First, there was the aftermath of 9-11. Then we had the turmoil of the
second Gulf War. Then we had the economic collapse of 2008. We went through
the hope and then the disappointment of those massive protests for the Arab
Spring. There was the overthrow of President Husni Mubarak. There was the
disastrous reign of the Muslim Brotherhood. There were the massive protests
that led to the removal of President Muhammad Morsi. Is this a trend going on
here? There was the rise of ISIS and its reign of terror and now there's the
tremendous losses from October 7th, the attacks of October 7th and the war in
Gaza and beyond afterwards. It has been a brutal 25 years and we need to have the
courage to name things rightly. And I encourage each one of you, when you read
about things like this happening in the Middle East, please take a moment to
pause and pray for the Christians who are over there trying to be light and
salt in their environment. Like Elisha and his servant, we must acknowledge the
reality of the forces marshaled against us. Seeing rightly clearly involves
standing with victims, outcasts and the weak in an effort to call for greater
justice and transformation for the future. It is true that your community here in
Jacksonville and it's true for the in relation to God's children all around
the world. We simply must name things properly. But that second step is even
more crucial and more important. We must set these realities in the greater
context of God's mission, love and power. Elisha's response to the servant seen
in the sees the larger picture therefore helps him to believe differently. We
read in verse 17 Elisha prays, oh Lord please open his eyes that he may see. A
prayer that would be good for each one of us for ourselves and those around us.
It's worth remembering here that the servant was not blind to begin with but
rather was only seeing part of reality, the harsh threats of reality. In answer
to that prayer God widens the servant's perspective and reframes it in light of
the power and the reality of God. The Bible continues quote, so the Lord opened
the eyes of the servant and he saw the mountain was full of horses and chariots
of fire all around Elisha. There are two really interesting parts about this
claim to me. First the revelation, their ability to see God's larger reality
dramatically shifts their perspective away from fear and on to action. And
secondly the Bible never mentions the vast divine army and chariots of fire
again. Instead it is one prophet's courageous action that defeats the entire
army. In other words this is not fundamentally a story about an angelic
army so much as it is God's faithfulness in working through his people. The core
belief of the church from the time of the resurrection onwards has been that the
life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has actually changed everything.
Through Jesus Christ we are able to look at the world with hope even when the
picture is incredibly dark. I often see this hope in the eyes of my current and
former students in Egypt and the wider Middle East. One of our graduates is a
student named Ekram and to be honest he was not one of the brighter students
that I had a chance to teach. But he came and he began to work in a
slum portion of Cairo. He entered this as a student and where most people saw
poverty, suffering and overcrowded conditions, Ekram also saw amazing
potential and hope. I can still recall him sitting in my office and talking
about what he was going to do after graduation. He would return to this place.
My head was spinning as I seemed to detect a contradiction between his
description of the circumstances and the smile of joy and excitement on his face.
After he graduated from, so I asked him about this contradiction and I said
well tell me about this disconnect of these terrible circumstances and your
your excitement on his face and he said this, I really think God is going to use
me to make a difference in this community. That is really exciting to me.
Ekram went on to graduate and he went back to that poor area of town. He didn't
have a building to worship. There wasn't a church established there so he began
walking around the streets and he noticed that there were lots of children
playing in the streets so he decided that he'd start a Sunday school that was
like Vacation Bible School consistently. He went around and kids flocked to it.
Before you know it there were almost a hundred kids coming to be with him for
these Sunday school classes. Not only that, their parents were ecstatic about
it and so they began to ask about the church that he was starting. Now years
later he actually has a building and over a congregation of over 300. He saw
something in those circumstances that others were not able to see when they
didn't see that wider perspective of the work and power of God. I mentioned
earlier that it's been a terrible century or quarter-swint century for
Egypt and the wider Middle East. That's only partially true. What I'd like to do
now is to challenge you to see that wider perspective, to have our eyes opened to
what God's work and power is doing in our region. During that same period, God has
been working mightily through the seminary and through the wider church. When
we arrived in Egypt in 1999, the seminary had 67 students. As of this fall, we had
an enrollment of almost 700. In 1999, we did not have any full-time Egyptians
with their PhDs. Today we have 10 Egyptians with their doctorate or who
are working on their doctorate right now.
Moreover, in the last 15 years, the number of Egyptian Presbyterian churches
has increased by over 30%. 15 years ago, we had no female Egyptian full-time
teachers. Today we have three, two with their PhDs and one in her final two years
of it. In many ways, it has truly been a glorious quarter-swint century if we only
have eyes to see that wider perspective. After we have named the reality for what
it is, seen it in its context of God's larger power and grace, we are to respond
with hope, courage, and compassion. In Elisha's case, he not only refuses the
king's question about slaughtering the Aramean army, but he treats them as
honored guests and offers them hospitality and grace. And it's that
action, that hospitality that actually stops the rating of the army. So I've
said these three steps of seeing the circumstances as they are, praying that
God could help us to see them in the context of God's power and grace, and
then finally being moved to action. One of our students in 2010 had been admitted
to our D-min to become a pastor. Unfortunately, before he came to
the seminary, he was in a tragic accident and he lost his leg. In Egypt, it's a
shame and honor society, and so for someone to have a disability like to
actually be missing a leg was incredibly hard for him and his whole family. He
spent most of that year not in his first year of the MDiv program, but at home
trying to rehabilitate. And through the grace of other people who came along
side him, he came to the point that God was still calling him to go to
seminary and become a pastor in spite of what others said. So he got in contact
with a friend who was in the United States at the time and the friend found a
prosthetic leg that was light. The friend brought the leg over for the
student and the student showed up. His name is Joseph, but we'll just call him
Joe. So Joe showed up at our seminary and for the whole first year of his time
there, he always had long pants on. It was not an issue where he wanted revealed
to others. Then he went to his summer internship and he realized that he really
could be a pastor. He served that community powerfully and when he came
back to our fall retreat, which we held up in Alexandria and there was a pool
there, he came down for the first time that I'd ever seen that leg with a towel
around his shoulders and swim trunks on and his leg showing and he said, Dr.
Kennedy, will you take a picture of me? So I took a picture of him and he was
radiant with joy. Later when we got back to the seminary, he said, Dr. Daren, will
you please send me that picture? And I sent him the picture and he posted it on
on Facebook immediately for everyone to see. Advertising exactly who he was to
everyone and his caption continues to move me. He said, I'm the lucky guy who
walks with the prosthesis. Proud and so happy. What he had done is focused in on
the reality of his suffering, reframed it in the context of God's redemptive power
and purposes and he has been called to serve and served powerfully. About three
years ago, we hired him to be a professor of pastoral care and counseling at the
seminary and he's already gained admission to a PhD program in the fall
where he will be studying disability theology, a way of understanding the
full humanity of people who have disabilities. He's taking his circumstances,
having them transformed by God's grace and is going to have an impact on
generations in the church and in the Middle East. I don't know what the
reality is for you and your lives here in Florida. My guess is that there's
aspects of them that are quite nice but I'm quite sure that each one of us has
problems and brokenness in our own lives. There's hard realities for all of us
personally, communally, and globally. Elijah's witness calls us to see these
and name them truly. We do not run away from realities but we also set them in
the context of God's larger work and mission in the world and then God calls
each one of us to act and be transformative agents of grace and hope
for the world. May we all be transformed and transforming people by the power of
the Holy Spirit. Let us pray. Gracious God, you have called us into your service.
Let us embrace the realities of the world. See them with clear eyes. Widen the
perspective to understand exactly how you see them and respond with action for the
sake of the world. In Jesus' name, amen.