By the Revd.Dr. Anssi Simojoki
Lutheran Heritage Foundation
Nairobi KENYA
January 10, 2009 Grace and peace to from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ!
This is a funeral service. Therefore I leave aside many aspects of Bishop Andrew Mbugo Elisa’s life, such as his efforts to speak and work for South Sudan, to promote a just peace process amidst cruel civil war. Let others speak of these beneficial efforts after this funeral service. In worship we are in a particular manner before God. For this reason, I concentrate on the Word of God. I want to examine Bishop Andrew Mbugo Elisa’s exceptional career in the service of this word. St. Paul, the apostle of the Lord, writes in 1 Cor. 3:10-13: "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work." St. Paul is talking here of the building of God's temple, the church. It is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church in which the living God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, dwells on earth. In 1993 when the war was still raging in the Sudan, Mr. Andrew Mbugo Elisa together with a number of friends came to the conclusion that building the Church of Christ and serving it according to God's holy, saving will required better building material than the straw, hay and wood that they had been familiar with before. Liberal ecumenical theology being trashed out in endless ecumenical conferences proved to them to be only verbose human self-deception: “We all knew that we never spoke truth and still we continued speaking.” All this threshing and trashing out was, as we say in Swahili: “Maneno tu,” just words. The living God says through the mouth and the pen of Prophet Isaiah: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is. 55:8-9). Mr. Andrew Mbugo Elisa had come with his friends to a theological dead-end and craved for something which would be truly Biblical. It was in 1994 when we met in Kenya that they found Dr. Martin Luther's catechism, the Lutheran liturgy and the Lutheran hymnal. In these books they identified the Biblical doctrine and the church life handed down by the Early Church, the church of the apostles and martyrs. To their happy surprise, finding the truth of the Lutheran Confessions they had come home. They had finally entered the Temple of the Lord, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Since then, Andrew Mbugo Elisa was seen only on the site of this church building up the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Sudan. Mr. Andrew Mbugo Elisa became the first pastor of the church in August 1999. Consequently, he became the first bishop of the church in July 2006. On the last day of the year 2008 he left his church with a good number of pastors, with a growing number of congregations, with a theological seminary and other crucial institutions as well as an international network of connections. Andrew's hallmark as a builder was his strict demand for best theological and practical quality, in the words of St. Paul, "gold, silver and costly stones." He abhorred cheap theological compromises because he had seen in his life how useless is the non-biblical human straw, hay and wood in the church, how empty and useless are human ideas and words that are unknown to God and his Holy Word. Therefore he preferred waiting for a number of years in order to receive well-trained Lutheran pastors to the church rather than compromising the theology and the holy ministry of the church with hasty, superficial and fashionable short-cuts that in the long run will take the church nowhere. Andrew keenly followed this star in his building work. He could not be intimidated or bought to deviate from the Lutheran doctrine and its ecclesiology. These were to him the treasure in the field and the rare pearl that were finally found. This was for him more precious than any treasures of life. Before any kind of physical and psychological intimidation Andrew Mbugo Elisa was a fearless and proud African church father. As such he heeded the true needs of the Lutheran Church in the Sudan rather than any kind of personal flattery and benefits. Still, his amazing talent was to create respect, trust and friendship across various human boundaries. When Andrew Mbugo Elisa was to be ordained in Khartoum in August 1999, he sank prior to the appointed time into coma and spent a long period close to the gates of death. In the meantime, various wolves attempted to tear the church apart into heretical pieces just as St. Paul had warned the pastors of Ephesus in Miletus (Acts 20:29-32): "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw the disciples after them. So be on your guard! ... Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified." But then in August 1999, Andrew Mbugo Elisa suddenly woke up to become the first ordained pastor of his church. At this time, toward the end of the year 2008, we also prayed for a similar miracle. It was not granted. God had other plans for Bishop Andrew and for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Sudan. His plans are good. We should follow his plans and his will and continue the building work of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Sudan in humility without personal gain or self-glorification, without slightest tribal prejudice, without compromising the truth of the Word of God. Bishop Andrew was prepared for his departure by his final confession of sins, by the absolution he received and by the final blessing of his body and soul in this world before entering a better world than this. As everyone who believes, he is saved by grace and by grace alone. With forgiveness of sins God grants through faith life and eternal blessedness as Dr. Martin Luther teaches in his Small Catechism according to God's Holy Word. Humanly speaking much remained undone. It is always so. It is God who calls his builders, it is God who works trough their efforts and toils and it is God who sends them to rest in his appointed time. Everything is from God, through God and to God (Rom. 11:36). Therefore we say with Apostle Paul gratefully and trusting in God’s good will: "To him be glory forever! Amen." "Andrew Mbugo Elisa, for dust you are and to dust you will return.
Jesus Christ your Saviour will wake you up on the Last Day. Amen."  
Photo left: People greet the plane carrying Bishop Elisa's body to Yambio, Sudan. At right, Bishop Elisa's body arrives for commital at the Lutheran church in Yambio.
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