On the Thursday we left for Africa a little second grade girl named Maria passed away. Though the AIDS epidemic in Namibia makes people a little more accustomed to death, this was the first time Community Hope School faced the loss of a current student and it was no less traumatic than had such a tragedy occurred in our country. What complicated matters was that there was unclarity about the cause of death. Meningitis was printed on the death certificate but no one would positively confirm whether it was the non-contagious viral type or the terribly contagious bacterial form of the disease. The first three days in the country I witnessed the delicate dealings with danger and the intense quest for answers. The leaders of the school, John and Suzanne Hunter, talked to numerous medical people in Namibia and South Africa. They were also in constant communication with their son, Christian, who is a doctor in Washington D.C. Of course this impacted our trip as we could not expose our kids to a lethal disease in a foreign land. Finally on Monday evening the head of the ICU unit at the hospital where the little girl died gave a positive conclusion that the cause of death could not have been bacterial meningitis.
On Wednesday evening I attended a board meeting of the ministry. John explained the struggles of the previous week and the fear that had struck so many of the teachers and staff, especially those whose own children attended the school. At Community Hope School, God has assembled an incredible group of teachers to bless the poorest children of Windhoek. Several workers are natives of Namibia, but there are also missionaries from Canada, Holland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the United States. Susan and I have known several of these dedicated Christians for seven or eight years. After John, who has been a missionary over thirty years, finished sharing, the oldest person at the table made an interesting comment. Brian is in his mid-sixties and entered the mission field as a young man shortly after completing the mandatory two years of military service required in his native country of South Africa. “John,” he said, “You’ve got to communicate the same conditions for your workers that we stressed in the old days. Do you remember when we used to take mission teams into the war zone on the border of Angola? We told those who expressed interest: ‘You can’t be a part of this team unless you are prepared to die.’ The requirements are no different today.”
We’ve all read the words of Jesus regarding the cost of discipleship. We all know the stories of persecution recorded in Acts and the epistles. But the blunt statement of a seasoned missionary in a distant land made me think. Are things supposed to be different today? Are the conditions Jesus gave in the first century still applicable in the twenty-first century? Is the cost the same for an American as it is for a South African? Should the twenty-year-old be as prepared to die as the sixty-year-old? Shouldn’t all Christians wrestle with these weighty questions?
This week we celebrate the death and resurrection of the One who knew the conditions of his mission. And the beauty of the story is: He still came.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep… No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” John 10:14-18