CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE
THAT MANY PEOPLE SHOULD BE KEP ALIVE

Gabriele Dietrich

    Greetings to all of you in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who never studied for a degree, whose tests and trials were of a different nature and in whose footsteps we all try to follow.
    This is a commemoration service for the founders of Serampore College and I would like to remember not only the inspiring and pioneering deeds of William Carey, Joshua and Hanna Marshman and William Ward. I would also like to keep in mind the great human costs paid by the three wives of William Carey.  I would like to remember his first wife, Dorothy Placket, whom he married when he was still a shoe maker in the midlands of England and who lost her mental balance as she was about to be left behind highly pregnant when he set out for India.  She followed him under great anxiety, though she had hardly ever left her home village.  She was severely mentally disturbed over the last five years of her life before she died in 1807.  As one author pointed out: “It may be said that ‘she was literally offered upon the (altar of) service and sacrifice of faith’”. 
    His second wife, the Danish aristocrat Charlotte Rumohr had come to India on her own and was converted by Carey to support the mission.  She suffered from continuous physical ailments and could not walk for several years before she passed away in 1821.  But she supported him vehemently in his work.  During the last phase of his life, during which he faced failure of his own health, he was nursed by his third wife Grace Hughes whom he married in 1923 and who was with him till his death in 1834. 
I also commemorate the death of children in all of those families who had thrown in their lot with the people and though privileged, could not protect themselves from the general conditions.  We are today not only benefiting from the work of the founders but also from the invisible labour of their near and dear ones, a presence unsung and mostly forgotten.
I have chosen two bible verses for this commemoration which happens to be the readings for this day, Feb.10th in the order of the congregation of the Herrnhut Brothers which chose their name at a time when women were not in the picture.  They derive their readings by lot.  The First Testament reading is from the end of the story of Joseph and his brothers: Gen.50,20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”  The Second Testament reading is from Romans 8,28: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose”.  These verses seem very fitting with respect to the life of the founders who were facing adversities first from the East India Company and then from Indian administrators as well as discord and schism within the mission itself.  Ultimately, when William Carey died, he felt he had achieved everything he could have wished for.  Serampore College survived beyond colonial times and has to rethink its mission afresh in the time of globalisation, rising communalism and alarming environmental deterioration.
I would like to remember specifically two contributions of William Carey in the context of Mizoram and of the North Eastern states as a whole.  William Carey was a relentless bible translator who learned a large number of vernaculars.  While he took a strong stand against Sati and instantly translated the British legislation against it into Bengali lest lives be lost due to delay – he was at the same time concerned with inculturation of the Gospel and deeply respected the indigenous culture.  The other thing I would like to remember was his passionate interest in botany and gardening, as well as agriculture.  He listed 427 species of plants which he had been growing in his vast garden in Serampore and was a co-founder of the Agri-Horticultural Society in Calcutta in 1820.
I am raising these two issues of culture and eco-system specifically in the context of the North East because we are clearly placed into a context where the traditional culture and the eco-system have come into a crisis.  The Westernisation which has come with the Christian Missionaries has subverted and disrupted the forest economy and the jhum agriculture, the educational systems of the tribal village and the indigenous knowledge system of herbs and plants and medicines.  All this was dismissed as superstition.  Today, the addiction to Western medicine has also led to drug misuse and addiction, even to AIDS.  The incorporation into the Indian State has accelerated process of Westernisation.  Ironically, the missions have not only paved the way for Faith in God but also for the rule of Mammon which after incorporation of the North Eastern states into the Indian nation has become all pervading.  The optimism of the missionaries that Western development will solve all problems has come into a deep crisis.  Here in Aizawl we see an eco-system which has come to its limits.  Even breathing has become difficult.  The forest has been destroyed and marketed.  The national wealth flows outside the state, the money which corrupts flows in.
What does it mean to commemorate the founders of Serampore in this context?  We may have to go back to the local roots more thoroughly than the early missionaries anticipated.  The verse from Rom.8, 28 follows closely the larger text of rom.8, 18 onwards.  This text speaks of the longing of creation for the revealing of the children (sons and daughters!) of God (Read verses 19-24). 
Creation has been groaning in travail to obtain the freedom of the children of God.  This freedom from decay is not achieved through the subjugation of nature by technology and money which we have seen happening before our eyes.  It is the setting free in travail, in birth pangs, provided we are also set free as children of god, in harmony  with his creation and only then will we also achieve the redemption of our bodies.  Only then we will be free, able to breathe, independent of drugs, free also from an otherworldly religiosity which becomes another opiate, as it tends to close its eyes to reality and yearns for the world beyond.  We will be free for a transformation of our society in which we can reconcile with our culture and our history as well as with nature. Aware and open eyed we will be walking into a future which we cannot even imagine at present but which we have strength to hope for, even as we cannot see it.  The spirit helps us in our weakness, she intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.  It is on the ground of this hope that we affirm: ‘We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose’.
 Let me now come back to this Serampore convocation.  What does this theological reflection mean with regard to the purpose of our theological education?  We have come here not only from Calcutta and the North Eastern states, we have come from all over India and some friends have even come from overseas.  What are we trying to achieve and to whom are we answerable?
There are different answers to this question.  We are clearly living in the age of globalisation.  I often get the feeling that International Academic Standards have become very important and all-pervading in our theological training.  Even as the churches are supposed to have been de-colonized, the liberation of theology by our brand of tribal/adivasi theology, Dalit theology, feminist theology, eco-theology, often feels a long way off.  Even these new theologies get co-opted as international fashions. How close are we to our own people, to our own history, to our villages and city slums?  
Another answer is of course that we are answerable to the churches for whom we are training women and men to be pastors.  But even this answer may not suffice as the churches are also riddled with court cases, dominated by denominational and financial self-interest.  And they still have hardly any place for women in responsible positions.
Thirdly, we may be saying that we are answerable to God or to Jesus Christ, but what does it mean?  It means being answerable to the spirit of love and sustenance which overcomes all competition, even evil intention.  As in the story of Joseph and his brothers: God’s intervention brings it about that many people should be kept alive.  I am thinking of the struggle of the people in the Narmada valley.  Over the past three days, the government has been trying to change the Narmada Award into money for land instead of land for land.  People have been squatting in front of the ministry for human empowerment.  If they are driven from their land, those people will die because the river will die.  How do we achieve a development which allows people to live and work and eat, to have their own culture, their own struggles, their own people’s movements?

How are we answerable to the groaning of the new creation which is longing to be born, provided we are all ready to become daughters and sons of God reaching out to the people’s struggles for survival all over the country?  When the Kargil war was fought, the churches rushed to document their patriotism by supporting the war efforts.  The next war can start any day.  Where do we stand?  When the Supreme Court Judgement in the Narmada case was pronounced against the affected people, the central Home Minister declared it as the third achievement of his government, the first two being Pokhran II and the second one Kargil.  Can we hear the cries for peace and livelihood?
May God give us ears to hear the groaning of the New Creation, voices to groan with her, compassion, rahamim, movements of the womb to give birth to the new life. May God give us fearlessness and a long breath to bear with the pains of labour.  If we are ready for this we can confidently say that we know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.

Amen.