Out of Darkness

Ephesians 2

I spent some time in Africa. I was young. The kind of young that is still impressed in the open mouthed, eyes wide, stand still and stare way. I lived in a monastery out beyond the end of the bus lines in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We got to know a lot of people where they lived, by name, who they were. It was there I first ran into paganism. It stopped me as cold as seeing my first pack of hyenas roaming around outside the walls of the compound. The thing that blew my mind about the worship of small gods was the terror of the worshipper. These folks lived defensively. The gods were their enemies, very, very powerful enemies, bullies that rolled over them like a motorcycle gang over children in a playground. If these powerful beings noticed you it was not a good thing. The only reason you worshipped was to get on their good side. It was no guarantee they’d be nice to you. Gods have bad hair days. But when and if you came to their attention, maybe, if you shed some blood and offered some sacrifice, maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t swat you like the bug you were to them.
These folk saw these young Americans as allies of another god. The guys in the black dresses, the Christian Monks were magicians. They had given their lives to be servants of this Christian god. He wasn’t very nice. No god was. But he seemed to be very powerful. And we young Americans were allies of these men in black. We were living proof of the power of this not very nice god. Look how big we were, six feet tall, though we were considered barbarians, uncouth at best.
I wondered about this one day to a woman we knew who knew enough English and some Italian words to communicate when assisted by the high art of charades. I wondered why she didn’t consider worshiping the Christian god if He was so powerful. Her eyes got big and she shook her head very slowly, hunching and looking over her shoulder. She leaned forward and whispered to me, “They listen. They will take my children.” She cried and then told me she would live. “Each day without death is life.”
I still have dreams about her, hunched and whispering, “…alienated…, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
We have a gift. Too often we forget. We forget about the covenants of promise, sealed in God’s blood, not curses sealed in ours. Thanks be to God. Amen