In today’s reading from I Samuel we learn of another way of judging others. Our story begins with grief. The prophet Samuel is grieving over the loss of Saul’s leadership, but God doesn’t allow him to sink into despair. No, the Lord commands Samuel to get up, fill his horn with oil and set out to find a new king. Samuel is sent to Jesse, the father of seven sons. Jesse brings out his eldest son, Eliab to show to Samuel, but the Lord says, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”(I Samuel 16: 7b) While the world, especially in Samuel’s time, would choose the oldest son, or primogeniture, God has God’s own plan. God chooses by what is in the heart. Each time Jesse brings out a son, the son is rejected, until finally it appears that none are left. Jesse’s youngest son, David, was the only one not at the sacrifice. He had been left at home to take care of the sheep. Samuel asks that the youngest son, David, be sent down so that he can have a look at him to see if this could be the one God is looking for. And he arrives, and the scripture describes him as “ruddy, with beautiful eyes, and handsome.” But it was not for these things that he was chosen, instead it is the beauty that is within his heart, that the Lord calls out yes, this is the one who I choose and Samuel anoints him with oil and the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him. The Spirit of the Lord will enable this young shepherd to do great things in the name of the Lord.

In my hand is a beautiful rough stone called lapis lazuli. This blue stone is extremely rare, so rare that it is found in only two places in the world: Chile and Afghanistan. Two months ago, I had the amazing experience of being called out of the pasture tending to the sheep, or in my case the house caring for the children, and was invited to help represent the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ on a pastoral delegation to Chile to meet with pastors in the Pentecostal Church of Chile and talk about the future of our partnership with this mission relationship between two very different Christian denominations. I traveled down to Chile with four pastors and Elena Huegel, a Global Ministries missionary in Chile, and Carrie, a nineteen-year old missionary intern from Massachusetts who is an engineering student at the University of Miami, met us there. For her semester abroad, Carrie chose to work for free as a missionary to the Shalom Peace Center in Chile.

As our reading began in grief, in the middle of the story, right after Saul has lost his authority, and before a new king is called, so too I want to invite you into my Chilean experience by entering into the end of my trip. Picture a small band of traveling pastors, now well-bonded in shared experiences, mistakes made, lessons learned about language, culture and ourselves, gathered together at the airport right before the security check point. I am reminded of a wonderful film, Love Actually, where the opening and closing scenes show a collage of images of people saying hello and farewell at the airport. Airports are the scenes of such raw emotion as we transition from one reality to the next. Sometimes our ability to fly from one world and culture goes too fast for our minds to deal with the culture shock of being away from home and returning.

Knowing all of this, Elena Huegel, the missionary, gathered us in a circle and pulled out a rough lapis lazuli for each of us and pressed one into each of our palms and told us a simple story of a stone. (Abridged form)

“A stone which lived a quiet life at the bottom of a stream, slowly being polished by the rushing water until one day it was lifted out of the water and put into a dark bag. After being jostled around for several days, that stone was pulled out of the bag and thrust into a rough piece of leather and then the stone was hurled into space. What joy. Now it could see everything below! It could see the stream, the grass, the trees, the mountains in the distance, and many men dressed in shiny armor and helmets, holding up swords. The trip ended quickly for it had just taken in an eyeful, when it crashed into something hard and fell onto the ground.

A few seconds later it felt something heavy land beside it and the earth shook with the fallen weight. Then someone picked the stone up again and a voice said, “Just the little stone I needed, and at the moment I needed it.” And the stone returned to the dark bag where it continued to be with the other stones until it was needed again. This is the story of David and the giant Goliath, but from the perspective of the little stone, and it is a metaphor of life, with its objectives and dreams. Sometimes we have been sitting in the stream waiting for something exciting to happen in life but didn’t realize that God was polishing and preparing us. Sometimes we have been in a dark bag where we have clashed with others and complained of the disagreeable and painful situations we were in. But God uses the bumping and the dark times to teach us patience and confidence in God. Sometimes we feel dizzy, in a whirling sling of activities, running crazy with thousands of things to do and hardly a moment to catch our breath. Sometimes we have the opportunity to fly through the air, and with clarity and vision, we feel the ecstasy of our goals in sight. And sometimes, we are smashing up against giants, hoping against hope that the aim and thrust have been just the right amount to bring it down. The Bible says that God didn’t look at David’s size, strength, or outward appearance but looked at his heart. We’re in God’s hands, and with God’s power and perfect aim, we can be little stones used to bring down the giants of these times.”

“Just a Little Stone” ---Elena Huegel, Global Ministries newsletter, May 28, 2008

And there I stood, crying, a bit afraid to leave this wonderful new reality I had been living in where I was now a full-fledged, Pastora Christina, speaking and preaching in Spanish with the most generous people and returning to my own life, which often feels like life in the bag being jostled about in the dark and bumping up against the other stones. Elena told us that for the past 9 days, we had been flying through the air, like the stone hurling out into space, but no one gets to stay in flight forever. So upward we were sent, to return to our flocks to tell the story and further the partnership.

I feel honored to stand before you and testify about the power of mission partnership because I have been blessed to be a part of this experience. Mission is experiential. It is something that we can taste, touch, feel and learn only by the doing of the act.

One day during our stay, we traveled to a tiny village called San Javier where we were to celebrate Pastor’s Day. Pastor’s Day is an interesting church celebration where the congregation lifts up and supports the pastor and the pastora for all of the love and ministry that they have blessed the congregation with during the past year. Worship in the Pentecostal Church of Chile begins around 7 p.m. and can go on for three or four hours, but it is filled with music played on mandolins, guitars, Chilean accordions, drums, keyboards and huge choirs of young men and women, children, teens and mature adults. It is quite a sound to experience. In order to show hospitality to the visiting pastors, Pastora Katherine (an Episcopal priest) and I were sent to the home of a woman who had been a domestic servant for a doctor in the capital and their thirteen-year old son Matheus. The Chilean woman was so generous, she told her pastor she would host any delegate, as long as they ate meat. The last group of delegates she had were vegetarians and all of her favorite recipes are for meat. When she heard we ate meat, she laughed and invited us into the kitchen. Maria let us watch her roll out empanadas and bake them in a brick kiln in the garage. Through Maria’s love, hospitality and faith in Christ we could taste mission in the mixture of beef, onions and eggs baked in the heat of the kiln.

After the meal was eaten, Pastora Katherine went up to rest and prepare to preach that evening. I wanted to explore. Matheus, the thirteen-year old offered to take me out to walk around the village. San Javier is a poor village. All of the trees are cut at about six feet, leaving only the main trunk without any life or branches. I asked why this practice exists and they told me that the streets are very dangerous, especially with drug dealers, so they cut the trees to make the streetlights brighter during the night. The Pentecostal Church of Chile builds churches in the most dangerous neighborhoods and in the poorest villages. They begin their ministry with the poor, the addicts, and the forgotten ones. For the Pentecostals, conversion to Christ means the end of drinking alcohol, drug abuse, and violence against one another. Instead, the young men and women are invited into the church at night for a different kind of reality. One where their voices are heard in song, as they sing and play instruments to worship God and where anyone, male or female, can testify in front of thousands about how God is working in their lives.

Matheus linked arms with me and we walked down half a block and stopped in at his cousin Angel’s house. Teenagers in San Javier have been taught that they must go in and sit down to speak with the parents and grandparents before they take off to hang out.

As the mother of two North American teenagers, I was moved by the respect that these young men showed me. Even during the day, the streets in San Javier are dangerous. These two young teens designated themselves as my protectors, walking on either side of me as my bodyguards. Matheus used his precious cell phone minutes to call his mom several times to check in with her and say that the Pastora was happy, not tired and loved walking around the village getting to know the landscape through the eyes of teenagers. His cousin Angel, ran across the street and went into a corner market to buy some lemon and orange hard candies to share with me wrapped in a plastic cone. Matheus’ grandfather, who by now was getting worried about us, came driving around the streets to make sure I was safe. We tried to stop him, but he missed us. The phone ran out of minutes, so we turned around to make sure Maria didn’t worry about us. The two boys began singing songs out loud about God’s love and Jesus as we walked down the street with conviction and pride. I don’t know any teen, or probably any adult, at West Parish who would belt out hymns walking down Main Street in Hyannis. Yet for these teenagers, faith is not something that happens only in church. Being a Pentecostal in Chile means choosing a completely different way of life. You belong to God, not consumerism. You are called to live a changed life, one where obedience to God and the church comes before rebellion, freedom from parents or authority figures and even cultural influences such as the internet, music and school must submit to the rigorous demands of the Pentecostal faith. Here I was the Pastora visiting Chile to talk about God’s vision for us, and the boys on the street were living far more faithfully than I.

I believe that mission partnership has the power to teach us more about ourselves than we can ever know staying home. Mark Twain once said, “You never really know your home until you leave it.” More often than not, we may think we are going to help out someone else in a mission project, and yet the people who are transformed most by the experience is ourselves. Whether we choose to experience mission by getting out and building Habitat Houses in our own communities, or traveling to partnership areas abroad, mission must be experienced. Writing checks from the Board of Outreach may feel good, but our lives are rarely transformed by check writing. I believe that often times we must get out into the streets and walk in faith with others down dangerous streets outside of our own cultural contexts to experience mission in motion. By staying in another’s home and opening our homes up, we can taste, touch and hear mission.

I invite each of you in worship today to find ways to get involved in the Chilean partnership with the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. During April vacation, a group of teenagers and adult sponsors will be traveling down to the Shalom Center in Chile. We will be planning delegations of women’s groups to travel down to Chile and we need host families for Dorcas (or women’s groups in Chile) who are coming to Massachusetts. Choir exchanges have also been a wonderful mission partnership between the two denominations. West Parish sponsored Tim Warren and his mother, Kathy, for a youth trip to the Shalom Center two years ago and their lives will never be the same. Ask them to tell you about the experience. Kathy’s pictures are amazing and everyone is still talking about how much they loved Tim. In March, the Women in the Spirit will be traveling to the New England Women’s Conference in Burlington, Vermont and we can help host the Chilean Dorcas women’s group which is coming to visit us. Let’s be in conversation about how this rich partnership can help shape our faith and love for one another and in Christ across two continents.

Amen.