Day 36 - The Worship that Makes Sense of Haiti

Haiti is broken. It's so poor...it's government so ineffective...it's arable land so depleted. It just looks hopeless. Throw in conversation about the damage of hurricanes, already destitute people now entirely homeless, nominal crops wiped out, and dirt cookies being sold on the streets. I saw those dirt cookies.

Poverty.

You know, Jesus prefers some people over others. It's the church's "dirty" little secret. We don't like to talk about it especially in suburban affluent USAmerica. Jesus makes it very clear in his gospels that it is the poor he stands with.

Mary the mother of Jesus proclaims before Jesus is born, "He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1:51b-53).

In Luke 6 Jesus says that the poor are blessed and will inherit the kingdom of God. In Luke 9 Jesus refuses to turn a crowd of thousands away hungry. In Luke 14 the litmus test for true discipleship is the surrender of all possessions.

What do you think Jesus is getting at? Is poverty "preferred" in the kingdom of God?

St. Lawrence was a deacon in the early church in the 4th century. He's remembered as the first church treasurer because he was asked to give an accounting of the church's assets by the Emperor. Lawrence new that the ruler's motives were wrong...and that the counting of assets wasn't being done for the sake of the kingdom but for the pilaging of the church. So on the day that he was due to give his report, he filled the palace courtyards with the poor and widows and down trodden among whom he'd divided the church's liquid assets. The ruler asked him, "What is this? I asked you to give me an accounting of the church's assets?" To this Lawrence replied, "THESE people ARE the wealth of the church."

He was martyred just a short time after--burned to death on a gridiron.

I do not believe that poverty is a more blessed state of being. I think that when you have nothing you have something that people who are immersed in stuff often have difficult finding: open hearts towards God. And I think God values that openness towards him...that state of acceptance that our lives are never fully complete, can never actually be complete, without that reliance on Him entirely.

In addition, God is a protective God, and he loves us all...but especially those who are the victims of systemic and social evil, of the hoarding and greed of those with power, and who find themselves expendable fodder for the comfort of another. Our God is a God of justice. And one of the most frequent refrains of scripture is his insistence on justice for those without power and means...whose situation and station strip them of their God given human dignity and value.

My heart is still aching. More so after this second trip than my first. There is poverty and need all over the world, but I can do something about this small corner. In fact, God mandates that I do.

The week made sense and came together for me on the last day when our traveling group, pilgrims from five different North American Lutheran congregations came together to share worship and communion last Saturday morning. I knew I was going to be a basket case as we began to pass the bread. And I was. In the Eucharist the pain of the world, my pain, your pain, and the pain of Haiti becomes an artifact of history and not an eternal reality. In the Eucharist, you can touch the healing in the promise.

Isaiah writes, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of well-aged wine strained clear. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken."

We worship because life and hope in the midst of so much that is wrong in life only makes sense in light of the God who raises the dead, who draws all nations to himself, who promises to swallow up all death forever, and who promises to wipe tears from all faces. This is the God who refuses to turn away the hungry, and who instead draws the hungering thirsting nations to himself and to his life.

I may look at Haiti with my human eyes and see no hope. But when I see Haiti and her children through the lens of God's promises I know for Haiti what I know for me and for you. We belong to God. The children of Haiti do too. And just as he refuses to let us go, he refuses to let them go.

So may God find us standing with those he stands with today, tomorrow, and on our journey to his holy mountain.

Praying blessings overflowing on your lives today.

Pastor Nathan