The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
What can one really say, this day, about wedding feasts, and wine, about the Gospel, without acknowledging the catastrophe that is occurring in Haiti right now?
Haiti is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church, and is the home of a Cathedral, a seminary, parishes and priests and thousands of faithful Episcopalians, in addition to missionaries from other dioceses throughout the United States. As lines of communication begin to open, we have learned that the seminary was perhaps destroyed, the cathedral damaged, at least four people were killed as they worshipped in a local parish, the bishop’s wife was injured, and many, many more people are still not accounted for, families are separated, and those who are not injured are trying to do what they can with limited supplies and resources to help the millions left homeless, hospital-less, lost.
More and more gruesome photographs and heartbreaking reports are emerging each day, and so we, here, must pray, as we weep with our brothers and sisters, with all in Haiti, as that already desperate nation tries to find sure footing in the midst of this tragedy.
Before coming to the Cathedral I served in a parish which sponsored a missioner in Port Au Prince. This woman, whose name is Kyle Evans, had been the church’s youth minister for many years and I was not surprised at all when she chose to answer God’s call and become a missioner for the national Church, and she packed up a few belongings and moved into a small dormitory with no hot water in a poverty stricken city half a world away which had recently made the news because the people were rioting because of food shortages. During her year of service she worked with students in the Episcopal seminary in Port au Prince, led art classes for children of the slums in that huge city, and through Kyle I came to know some of her students who finished their ordination preparation at Virginia Seminary. Some friends and I even went on a shopping trip for one student before he arrived one January, buying a winter coat, boots, gloves, scarves, sweaters- all the things a Haitian would need to live through his first Virginia winter. Upon arrival he immediately sent pictures to us and to home of himself, ankle deep in white snow on the seminary lawn, modeling I think all of his new wardrobe, layered against the cold. I imagine his family was aghast that he would travel to a place so frigid and so foreign, all on behalf of God, were afraid for his safety, much as we were afraid the first time Kyle told us she was going to Port Au Prince for a year. Kyle came back from Haiti late last November, shining like the sun with the power and joy of her time there, with the friendships she had made and the testimony to God’s love and grace she had experienced in the incredibly poor community she had been a part of, determined to go back as soon as possible.
As our Presiding Bishop noted in a statement earlier this week about the earthquake, the nation of Haiti was already in a desperate place economically, sometimes politically, well before this natural disaster struck. It has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for generations. But Kyle’s experience, and that of many others who have had the chance to live there, serve there, or minister to Haitians in the US, is that faith was something the people of Haiti had in abundance. In the midst of all of this suffering, we can be sure that God is with the people of Haiti, and they continue to praise him in the midst of their pain and fear and anger. Several news reports from the most ravaged areas quote an often heard Creole phrase: Beni Swa L’eternal- which translates to Blessed Be the Lord.
Inevitably, this week, before the dust had even settled, before the first supply convoy landed, a small chorus of voices appeared in our own media, claiming to speak for God, and proclaiming this horrible tragedy a judgment on the people of Haiti for supposed sins of their forefathers and mothers. I admit that I was enraged at this, and appalled at this co-opting of the faith that I have chosen to devote my life to, and my response did not show much Christian charity. Cynically, I was sure that this was a simple bid for attention or viewers, born of the worst judgment imaginable, or perhaps an outright intentional manipulation of those seeking answers for political and personal gain. Luckily I have surrounded myself with good friends who are even better theologians (and the best of Christians), and one of these suggested a less cynical view. She thought that what we were seeing writ large across the national screen was a battle of Gospel-views. On the one hand, she pointed out, we had the perspective of the many missionaries drawn to Haiti before this tragedy and the hundreds of relief workers on their way there now:
“So many folks are transformed by the good news that God chose to be born into a world when there was no room for Him that they'll give up all our cozy American conveniences and move to the poorest country on this side of the globe. They'll risk their lives to serve people that maybe the world likes to think we just don't have room for- The Gospel is God's good news, God's glad tidings. People in comfortable lives give up everything to come serve [others] when [the]ir world falls apart? Sounds like good news to me. A (very) rich…guy with a cable TV show proclaims God's curse on a now homeless nation? Not so much.”*
Her explanation helped me to see through my anger and my shame at being lumped into some monolithic “Christianity” with folks who could not see the good in God’s message to us, and ultimately I was able to gain perspective, and that charity I had lacked.
Suddenly I could see these vocal critics as angry, frightened, living in a world where God’s love was finite, and since there simply wasn’t enough of God’s love to go around, when bad things happened, there must be fault, there must be blame, or else anyone might be at risk.
And at that moment I realized the gift that I have been given by God in my faith, in my unshakeable belief that his Grace and love are without limit. The God I serve made a covenant with Noah, after the flood, to never wreak such destruction on the world again, and he sealed it with a rainbow, and said that humankind would never have to fear Him. God made a promise to all of us of his love, and he sealed that covenant with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
What can one really preach, this day, except the abundant nature of God’s love for us? It flows like wine at that wedding feast in Cana, and there will always be enough for us all.
*Quoting from a post of Jan. 15, 2010 on www.moamy.org
