James - Part 2 (Widows and Orphans)

This is the second episode in our summer sermon series, James: Wisdom from a Little Brother. Pastor Mike teaches from James 1:26-27 and interviews Greg and Charisa Knight with Hawassa Hope.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Verse 26 starts off Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves. Their religion is worthless. I told you he was not going to pull any punches. To look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. We'll look at a few of those things later in the coming weeks. But here he writes two verses to convey what it is to live the Christian life, what it is for the church to live out what they believe. James speaks of the goodness that should flow out of us together. The Hebrew word for good, as we learned it last year, is Tov. Say Tov for me. Tov, T-O-V. It's a Hebrew word for goodness. It's what we find in Genesis chapter 1. Followers of Jesus individually and together as a church are to have this reputation of being Tov, of being good. The fruit of the Spirit is part of it, it is goodness, that we would embody goodness. So in just these two verses, James uses a rare Greek word that is translated into the English word religious. Today we use this to describe different belief systems or categories of beliefs, like world religions. There's a phrase I grew up hearing, Christianity is not a religion. It's a a relationship, you've heard that. So why does James pick out widow and orphan of the people that need to be cared for? Well, one Mexican biblical scholar, Elsa Tamez, in her book, The Scandalous Message of James, wrote, The orphans and widows represent the oppressed and exploited. And the world responsible for their being oppressed represents the institutions, the structures, the value systems that promote injustice or are indifferent towards it. So the early church, they commissioned this group of people in Acts 6. These they were called deacons to specifically care for widows. Paul would give this advice to a young preacher named Timothy. In verse 1 Timothy 5, he says, give proper recognition to those widows who really are in need. But if a woman widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn, first of all, to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family, and so repaying, repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. The widow who is really in need and left alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. And James believes the help will come from the church. James encourages this kind of care because he believed that the heart of God was for the most vulnerable, like the widow and the orphan. So let me just go through a couple verses. I'm just going to simply read them, giving very little commentary. Let me give you a couple verses that just show this over and over again. This is just a small amount compared to all that are said, especially throughout the Old Testament. Exodus 22. Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. Deuteronomy chapter 10. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow. And he loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners. For you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. He's talking to those who are Israel, uh, the Israelites. Isaiah 1 says, Learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. So in that passage, the book of Job, we often many of us know that story. And at one point, Job begins to describe his own reputation. And in Job 29, it includes verse 12, because I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist them. The one who was dying blessed me. I made the widow's heart sing. What does that look like? To make a widow's heart sing. I was a father to the needy. I took up the case of the stranger. Did you notice the use of the word fatherless? So it was it was believed that the orphan word, scholars believe that the word orphan includes those who've lost both parents, but also those who've only lost one parent. That that term orphan would be applied to them as well. So we've been studying, and you've been studying, Jesus, many of you, for a long time. And when you read the gospels, you'll see that he is for the marginalized. In one point, he's preaching in Matthew, and uh and he says that if you were to live this life that I've called you to, that you would visit the sick and the poor, that you would help those who are naked, which would represent poverty, and that you would visit those who are in prison. And then on several accounts, like the one that uh Alsom read, he pays attention to the widow. He notices them when they're in the room. So James writes this letter to a scattered church. Uh we see that the beginning of the letter. And he he's writing a letter to people from different count that are re in different countries or cities or communities, and he's saying to them all, let's collectively do this. We are going to collectively care for the widow and the orphan. It will become the reputation of the church, especially in the first centuries. And so today, uh I have the joy of introducing to you, if you don't know them, Greg and Carissa Knight, who I believe faithfully embody this well. I've known them for oh, I think 16 years now. And I have seen a consistency of embodying this way that James and many others in the Bible can call us to. And so would you welcome them on stage as we talk with them together? Yeah, you can't thank you. You can reposition those as as come as you feel would be comfortable. Oh. I am grateful uh that you're here this morning. I think uh we didn't we didn't necessarily plan it to be on Father's Day. We were kind of like trying to find a day and uh and then this worked out. I think this is appropriate. Uh so uh many people in the room may not know what a wasa hope is. Um and so would you um let me make sure I ask you the right question on the front end here uh so I don't throw anything. Uh what is the work that Awasa Hope does in Ethiopia?

SPEAKER_03 8:24

So we do a variety of things. Um it's it started off, we started off going to be very small, and all that we were going to do was give formula for kids that lived in this orphanage in the town called Awasa, hence Awasa Hope. Um and we just gathered a group of people and you know were going to send money for formula. That's all that we were gonna do. And then it just um it blew up in a good way. And over the months, coming months and years, program got pro program by program got added because we would go into different areas where we worked in the villages, and we go up to about four hours out into the countryside from Owasa, and we'd say, What's going on? How can we help? And then they would tell me what was going on, and then that's how we um ended up starting community sponsorship. That's how we did our first clean water project, that's how we started maternal care, that's how we did started HIV training and um small business grants for widows so they can take care of their family. And am I missing anything? Yes, so all of that is what we do. And the reason why we do it is, you know, God's word says that he is the hope for the hopeless and he is the comforter of the comfortless. And that's what we seek to do with using what we have and and the resources that we have going into Ethiopia and going into these places and going into these homes and showing up time after time after time again. And what people will tell us, they'll say, You brought God to us. And sometimes that comes before I've even said a gospel message with my words. But it's because we have showed up time and time again and sat with them in their grief, sat with them in their pain. And sometimes it's sometimes it's bearing witness to injustice that I can't fix. And that's hard. That's really hard. That it's it might be a cultural thing or it might be a resource thing that that we can't fix. It might be a medical problem that we can't fix, and it's sitting in that hut. Sometimes it's sitting in that hut and praying with someone as they put their face to that dirt. I know you've seen that, bowing down. And just being able to hold them with while they cry and telling them God sees you, God hears you, He He knows you are here, He is with you, and just sitting with them in that moment. That's probably one of the hardest things I think that we do is not being able to fix a problem, but being with them in it.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

And you you've um been present in Ethiopia for for how long?

SPEAKER_03 11:08

Um Well, as a Wassa Hope since 2012.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

2012, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

And you regularly are pr are showing going over and being present with people uh in that community.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yes, and then we have a we have a local staff that's there all the time. They do the they're the real workers of the group. They they're there all the time doing everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

They are nationals, they're Ethiopian, they're the Ethiopian church responding to your responses to to support the work of the to advocate.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Did you want to I didn't do you want to add anything to to what Chris has shared?

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Uh just just one thing. Um when the you were sharing the scriptures, the fatherless came up a lot, and we get to to visit the fatherless and and people in all sorts of distress, but it's our privilege to to because they're not fatherless, they're fatherless physically here, but God our father is still their father, and we get to be that representative, we get to carry Jesus to them. Um it's an amazing privilege, and just thinking about my children and how I think they're fearfully and wonderfully made, and I always think about them. God also is thinking about the folks there, our brothers and sisters there, we're also fearfully and wonderfully made, and it's really easy to forget them. But we get the privilege of um reminding people that you know there are others on the other side of the globe that um they are marginalized and and the fatherless, but we're able to take Jesus to them and then bring messages back here.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Mike, that verse where you make the widow's heart sing. Do you remember that lady we went into who needed a home on your first trip? And we walked in, we had never met her, she was part of the small business grants, and we walked in.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yes, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Um her name has slipped my head. It's Shiley, yes. And we walked in, and it was it was horrific circumstances that she was living in, her children were living in. She stayed up all night so the hyenas wouldn't come in and get her children because it was just open, it was it was terrible.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Which is a regular thing.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

A regular thing all the time, yes. And so we were we went and visited, we had just met her, she was showing us, you know, how she lived and everything. It was a tiny little spot. And by the next trip, we were able to build her a house. And um, you know, it's like a mud covered rectangular little thing with a metal roof. And when we went back in there, it was a dance party. It was a praise party. I mean, it was just such praise and dancing, and she was so excited and so happy. Um, she's actually in our video, if you watch our promo video, and she says, People call me by name now, I am a Sheila, you know, and just that was what came to my mind when makes the widow's heart sing is her response and just having a a praise party in her house with her.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

From despair to hope. Yes. Uh if uh if you had walked into her home, uh you would not call it a home uh or a house. Yeah. Right? It would it it was in such a condition. If you walk if we walked past it, we would not recognize it as being a house. Uh and so for heart, oh that's such a wonderful story to for her heart to sink.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

Right, yeah, yeah.

unknown 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

That's good. Uh what what uh what has compelled you to minister like this? To care for uh what's compelled you to to do the work in Ethiopia?

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Um I think it it for me it goes back pretty probably pretty far. I grew up in poverty and I was um my family was fed, there was a lot of circumstances, but there for a long time my family was fed by um a guy from Stanton, Willie Smith. I don't know if any of y'all know him, but he would go and get food from the food bank and bring it to our house. I think weekly is what he would do. So having grown up in that, I knew what it meant to be without. And I knew what it meant to be without lunch money or without food or without the clothes that you need, the medicine you needed, all of that. Um so I think that started, gave me a heart for it early on. Um, and then there was another guy um when we were at a different church, Jim Henry, and he had taught Sunday school, and he said God's gonna put opportunities before you. You have the decision whether to pick them up or not. And so that's always stuck with me. And I so I think about that every time an opportunity comes by, that I have the decision whether to pick it up or not. Um, so this was one of the things that we picked up. We adopted from Ethiopia in 2008 and 2011. And it just gave us a heart for the country, a heart for the people there. We wanted people to not have to make the choices that our um children's family had to make because of poverty and despair or because of death, preventable death. Um and just yeah, like it started off just wanting to give back a little bit, just wanted to care for those children that were still there so that they would have what they needed.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah, yeah. The um just to to piggyback on that, we didn't know what God was calling us to other than he was calling us to Ethiopia. And originally we thought that we would move and and be there. And when we went to explore, we found out that there were incredibly gifted people who just lacked resources that were already doing the work. So we came alongside. But each each step has been um it's been a little clouded. We could see what's right in front of us, what uh Jim Henry would say, we'll pick that up because it's right in front of you to pick it up and then pick up the next thing. Because had we been told, and Carissa does all the work, but had she been told what God was gonna do with her life and this ministry, she may have run away screaming because it's a lot. Yeah, and but he's been so faithful each step of the way to to provide the the resources, whether it be financial or people or just peace. Um so he's been faithful in that, but it's just pick up the next thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

So can you tell m can you tell us the scale which ministry is happening right now in Ethiopia through a wasahope?

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Um so we have almost 400 kids in our community sponsorship program that get met with monthly by our social workers and program director, and that's helping kids to stay in school, um keeping them with their family. We also give school.