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To Discover How To Be Human Now …
By Nancy J. Ramsay

In what follows I will share reflections from my participation on the African Awareness Team which traveled in Africa in December of 1984. I have not chosen to share statistics and detailed information but rather the convictions shaped by my experience. I am aware, however, that many who will read this essay are in the position to influence congregations to give sacrificially for African relief. I want to assure them that through Church World Service, our gifts for food, medical supplies, transportation, personnel services, and development are reaching the people and saving lives. The resources our gifts purchase are carefully monitored from their arrival in the countries of need to their distribution. They are also reaching the provinces in northern Ethiopia through the Christian Council of Sudan. We need to remember that the need in 1985 will be even greater than it was in 1984.

WE began our journey on the afternoon of December 17, riding north from Addis Ababa. We watched the sun set against the sere beauty of Ethiopian mountains and valleys. We passed young boys and girls, shepherding their flocks home, and burdened donkeys. We drove through small villages where lanterns were being lit for the evening. It was a very rough five-and-one-half-hour ride. We were often silent, each of us filled with our own thoughts about the day ahead in the feeding centers. Occasionally in the dusk, and later in the darkness, we were passed by open trucks filled with the standing shrouded figures of refugees from the drought being resettled in southern Ethiopia, where they would at least have some chance to live. Nonetheless, it was a sobering sight.

Gradually, we rode into the darkness to discover that the sky was literally filled with stars of amazing clarity and brilliance. One of us, and then another, began to hum the haunting melody of a spiritual, and then without consulting we all began to sing Christmas carols: "Silent Night, Holy Night…. O Come, O Come Emmanuel," "Hark the Herald

Nancy J. Ramsay is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology and Director of Field Education at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She is completing Ph.D. studies in Religion and Personality at Vanderbilt Divinity School

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Angels Sing," "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus Born to Set Thy People Free," and on and on. I suspect we sang those carols because we needed to claim once again for ourselves the hope they convey before we could face the hell our Ethiopian brothers and sisters are enduring.

Finally we reached the very simple inn where we would stay, and as soon as the Land Rover stopped, the shrouded, skeletal frames of begging, orphaned children surrounded the car, filling the night's silence with their monotoned pleas for food that we did not have. Without a word, a team-mate and I reached for one another's hand. We were holding on to hope and life as we looked into the faces of living death.

As I remember those children and the thousands of others we saw the next day clutching their bowls of porridge and cups of milk, some nearly too weak to eat, one dying, I try also to remember those stars and our carols. And I remember, too, these words from Auden's For the Time Being. They are the words of the wisemen explaining why they were making their journey. The first said: "To discover how to be truthful now is the reason I follow this star." The second followed the star, "to discover how to be living now." And the third, "to discover how to be loving now." Finally, the three of them summarized their individual hopes by saying: "To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star."

When I accepted the opportunity to make this journey, with eleven others and on behalf of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, to five African countries severely affected by drought and famine, I did so in the hope that we would discover how the Presbyterian Church (USA) could be faithful in the face of a disaster of devastating proportions confronting our African brothers and sisters. Surely, for the twelve of us on the African Awareness Team, the significance of the incarnation for what it means to be fully human is now grounded in the struggles and joys of the African church and the people to whom it bears witness.

The Christians in Africa have much to teach us about what it means to tell the truth, to choose life, to dare to love. Wherever we went-in Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Senegal-we went saying we had come to learn. In the context of drought and famine, political instability or oppression, and grinding poverty, Christians in Africa understand keenly the radical character of God's love with us in human form and the discipleship such love asks of us. Surely they need and hope for our prayerful, political, and financial support. Even more do we need their clarity of vision and purpose. They are in a position to help us see God's presence and power in the world in a compelling way.

The Christians whom we met in Africa are reminded daily of the fragility of life. Where for many of us our utter dependence on the providential care of the Creator God is problematic, for them it is their joy and sustaining hope. That is why they have much to teach us about telling the truth. When what is at stake is life itself, the truthfulness of the gospel is piercing and refuses any equivocation.

The first four days of our trip the team was divided in half.

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Presbyterian Moderator Harriet Nelson and five others traveled in South Africa, and six of us went on to Mozambique. No one really knows how many hundreds of thousands have already died, but it is estimated that as many as 3,000,000 people are endangered by the drought and famine. Mozambique is wracked by civil war. Security is a critical problem for the relief effort. The Christian Council of Mozambique, of which the Presbyterian Church is a strong partner, hosted us in the capital city, Maputo. The men and women of the Council, often at risk to their lives and from their meager resources, are themselves deeply and effectively involved in the relief effort, including careful monitoring of the distribution of food.

On the second night of our visit, before we would travel the next day far to the north to see the relief centers for victims of the famine, one of the Presbyterian parishes gathered to worship with us. Many of the choirs from congregations in the parish had prepared special music. Interspersed with the music, prayer, and Scripture, We exchanged formal greetings. We were also asked to bring news from the Church in the United States. Then the presiding minister invited parishioners to ask us questions. One older man stood and asked this telling question: "How can you know Jesus when you have so much?" I will never forget the knot in my throat when the interpreter sitting beside me in the chancel of the barnlike room told me what the man had asked. It was not a hostile question. Rather, it was the question of one who knows the costliness of ministry grounded in the truth of the gospel. Thank God the church in Mozambique prays for us.

Eight days later in Addis Ababa, the entire team sat in the office of Ato Emmanuel Abraham, President of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church, Mekane Yesus, our partner church in Ethiopia. It was only the day before that we had witnessed the distribution of food in the relief centers north of Addis. With those scenes etched in our memories, we listened to this soft-spoken man whose words had a prophetic edge. He spoke of the harassment of the church by the Marxist government which promises freedom of religion yet has confiscated six hundred churches and continues to imprison twelve clergy. He spoke of the spiritual conflict between the ideology of the government and the gospel. He said the Christian perspective is at cross purposes with this ideology, so true Christians have suffered in this conflict. He asked, if the church is not suffering, how can it be faithful? "We believers have to stand up." Where we are free to worship, the churches are crowded and the membership is growing. "So we are not overbothered too much. We cannot have a bed of roses as Christians. The Lord has promised we will have tribulation, if we do not just go to sleep as happens in some places." He went on to recall that in Ethiopia, as elsewhere, the church has been repressed before, but that from its witness to Christ during repression, the church has always grown. This is a source of consolation. Ato Emmanuel presides over a 600,000 member denomination which from its slim resources is engaged in significant development efforts as well as

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relief and has led a literacy program in which more than 1,000,000 have learned to read. They participate in carefully monitoring the food, medical services, and transportation services our Presbyterian funds provide through Church World Service. Pointedly he reminded us, "We are one in Christ Jesus. We ask you to share your abundance." In return Ato Emmanuel gives us the gift of the truth: the church, where it is faithful, will suffer.

Nowhere is the connection between faithfulness and suffering more evident than in South Africa. The second of Auden's wisemen followed the Star "to discover how to be living now." In Mark's Gospel, the decision for discipleship is put boldly:

If any would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever would save their lives will lose them and whoever loses their lives for my sake and the gospel's will save them (Mark 8:34b-35).

To choose to live is to choose to love and to obey the Christ for whom love and justice are inseparable. We have become familiar with the names of Desmond Tutu, Allan Boesak, and Beyers Naude as ardent, articulate, courageous spokespersons against the heresy of apartheid and in behalf of the justice and mercy of God. There are many others, whose names we do not know, who serve congregations in South Africa and on the homelands. These pastors are called upon not only for spiritual leadership but for moral and political leadership as well.

On returning from Mozambique, we went north for a day to meet with pastoral leaders in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church-a Black denomination whose history is connected to the Swiss Missionaries. With them we saw first-hand the grinding poverty imposed on the Blacks forced to do subsistence farming on the steep and rocky soil in the Gazan-Kulu homeland. In the wake of drought their fragile systems for life support have broken down. Hunger is a way of life. But that was not the worst of their story. These Presbyterians showed us the fertile farms of the former Swiss Mission on which thousands of Black South Africans have farmed productively. The land is too fertile, according to the government, to be left with the Blacks. It has been reclaimed by the white South African government. As has already happened to millions of Black South Africans, these people and their pastors are to be resettled-not in the adjacent Gazan-Kulu homeland but far to the east on the border with Mozambique. The land is uninhabitable, infested with malaria and rabid animals. Resettlement to that land will mean genocide. It is clear to us who made this journey that to combat hunger in South Africa apartheid must end. Imagine the agonizing decisions before the pastoral leadership of this denomination as they help their people determine what it will mean to choose life in the face of tyranny.

In the presence of these Christians, we are called to affirm that to choose life---"to discover how to be living now"-is to choose the way of the cross. To choose life is not only the way of the cross, however. It is

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also the choice to love. When asked "Who is my neighbor?", Jesus responded with a story about selfless love that does not count the cost or exclude anyone. Everywhere we went in Africa, we met Christians who understand that the love revealed to the world as a vulnerable, peasant child is to be given to restore life and hope.

When in Mozambique, we had the opportunity to meet with the cabinet official responsible for the government's relief efforts. He was very pleased that we had come to see firsthand the needs of this country devastated by five years of drought. He wanted us to know that the Christian Council of Mozambique had been the first to donate food when word of the famine was received. It had been the first to communicate the need for help and the first to donate seed. Most of all, the government trusts the Christian Council, he said, because it gives what it has to all, realizing that all are God's people. Such is the convincing witness of these Christians.

Four days later five of us rode deep into rural Kenya past drought-stricken land further decimated by army worms that have reduced what did grow to stubble and have eaten the grasses on which the livestock depend. We rode with a minister who is a development officer with the National Christian Council of Kenya. He wanted us to meet a member of his staff, a remarkable young man who, with his wife, is loving the people of a village, and the hundreds of people nearby, working with them toward the possibility of sufficient food and water. It is an uphill struggle convincing the villagers to change. But, because of him, many now have their own storage tanks for rain water. He designed and supervised the construction of a dam that will insure clean spring water for six hundred people even during drought. He has organized the villagers to insure supplemental feeding programs for malnourished children and a cooperative that offers lower costs for grain. He is weary of the struggle, but he continues to give his life's energies so that those about him will have life, and perhaps even have it more abundantly.

One last word about African Christians and love. On this same trip in rural Kenya around noon, we drove to a small compound where women were gathered to show us the water storage facility they were constructing with the help of the Christian Council. First they showed us their fields reduced to stubble by the army worms. Before we left, they invited us to tea. But it wasn't just tea. Though they bad very little, they bad killed chickens and roasted them and also served us a goat stew and rice and bread. They had prepared a feast for us. I don't believe I have ever understood the Lord's Supper more clearly. Christians in Africa have discovered what it means "to be loving now."

During Advent, twelve of us set out to see how we and the church could be helpful to the human community in Africa. They have told us, and we will share that word with you. But we also return to say that God's Spirit has blessed the church in Africa. African Christians are prepared to feed the deep hunger in our churches. In Jesus Christ they have discovered what it means to be human now-to tell the Truth, to choose Life, to dare to Love.