20040704AbundantGoodness

Going to General Assembly, even for a few days, was very exciting. One of the high

points was on Saturday night when the new Moderator, Elder Rick Ufford-Chase, a 40-year-old

border mission worker from the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, was elected.

According to the Presbyterian News Service (and I am a witness), he “impressed the

commissioners with his deep commitment to risky, life-on-the line mission work.”

Ufford-Chase founded BorderLinks, a bi-national organization that tries to connect and

educate people of faith on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. He has served BorderLinks for

17 years, works with the Evangelical Center for Pastoral studies in Central America in

Guatemala, and has been a co-moderator of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. With his wife, Kitty,

he has been trained to serve as a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that

has sent teams of “accompaniers” to Colombia, Iraq, Palestine and the U.S./Mexico border

region.

“God can use us to transform the world,” he told the commissioners. “I have found that

fear and fulfillment go hand and hand.”

He described how his young son wanted to slide down a rope from a high tree, and

screamed the whole way down, until he was in his father's arms. Ufford-Chase said he realized

the scream expressed both joy and fear. That's how it is to be in mission for Jesus Christ, he said.

“We are invited to get in the boat with Jesus, like those disciples,” and take a risk, he

said. “I want to be part of a church that says ‘Yes' and gets into that boat with Jesus.”

Now, I want to make a connection to the story of Naaman and his healing and restoration.

I think the connection is this: that his healing was something that happened when he did

something very simple – he took a bath in the Jordan River even though he thought it was a

ridiculous thing to do, even though he thought it was beneath his dignity – but he just did it – he

played his part – and he played it according to God’s script.

And it happened because a whole series of other people – people you would never have

thought would have anything to do with this healing – they all played their parts and evidently

according to God’s script.

There was the little girl. She was a slave, having been taken into captivity from her home

in Israel. She knew about Elisha and his miraculous powers. And when she learned about

Naaman’s leprosy, she could have kept quiet about what she knew. After all, why should she

help this foreign oppressor? But she didn’t – she made the choice to witness in her own way by

telling Naaman’s wife about this wonderful prophet who might be able to help her husband.

And then there was Naaman’s wife. She might have written off the words of this servant

girl as and “idle tale,” but she didn’t. She listened – really listened - to the girl and found her

credible – and went and talked to her husband – and was so persuasive that Naaman – desperate

as he was went to the king – who, even though he might have thought it was a little strange, sent

a letter to the king of Israel.