Visiting Theologian: Seeing & Living with the Eyes of Faith

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.