I Wasn't Home for Christmas

I Wasn’t Home for Christmas

It’s as simple as that. I wake up January 19, look at the calendar, wonder where Christmas went and how it got to be 2010, and then I remember.

Oh yeah. I spent Christmas in Peru. Crazy.

This was the first Christmas of my life that I’ve spent away from my family, my house, my bed, my church, my dinner table, my tree – whatever sign of homeliness and familiarity we decide to use, this was the first time I was far from any of it. I missed it, for sure, but mostly in the days leading up to Christmas, in Advent (my favorite season of all, liturgical or otherwise), the season of expectation. A certain excitement and warmth builds within us as we wait for…something. What exactly we don’t know. The coming of the Christ child? Getting to light the big white candle? (Personally the pink candle was always my favorite.) Finally getting to find out what’s inside that present? The Monroe/Block Christmas Party? The Christmas pageant? The Christmas pig? The infamous “Christmas Stew” that you eat for weeks after Christmas and basically consists of everything you ate for Christmas dinner thrown together in a pot? The day when your kids finally let you change the radio station form Lite 98? We don’t really know. But it’s somewhere in the waiting that the Christmas spirit always finds me.

So this year, as I was waiting, I had the very disconcerting realization that I had no idea, really, what I was waiting for. None of the things listed above were going to happen for me this year. Except for the coming of the Christ child, I guess, but who really knows what that means anyway. I wasn’t in much of a mood for divine mysteries.

So I was excited, I was sad, I had new learning experiences, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sarah Alta at Megaplaza because in some strange way, the lights and banter of the mall were the closest thing I could find to my experiences of US Christmases. (As a side note, I actually don’t mind commercialized Christmas. Sure, it’s very easy to miss the point and important to remind ourselves that we are really celebrating the humble birth of a man who lived a life of revolutionary love and was to change history forever, but for me, there’s something exciting, sentimental, and romantic about the lights, the music, the excited kids…it just does it for me.) I ate too much, exchanged gifts, cried on the phone with my family (sorry about that, guys…), watched Love Actually and had myself a Peruvian Christmas. I’m still processing what it was to spend Christmas away from home and experience it in a completely different cultural context – I may not finish processing that until next Christmas. But for now, I’ll try to describe for you, as best I can, my Peruvian Christmas.

First of all, as many of you know, working in the church makes for a crazy Christmas season. And it certainly was busy and crazy, but not as much as I expected. You see, for a culture in which church and religious practice are often treated as the most essential and core part of one’s life, Christmas is surprisingly…unchurchly. Christmas itself is really about family here. Each of the two churches I work for had a Christmas service, but one was December 20^th and the other the 23^rd. Christmas Eve services don’t happen in the IEP (though I’m willing to bet something like that exists in the Catholic church…).

In the IEP Ingeniería, the service was a little bit like a big Christmas talent show with interspersed songs (though most weren’t Christmas songs), a mini Christmas story reenactment, and a sermon. And then when everything was done, we drank hot chocolate (even though it’s summer here) and ate Paneton, the traditional Peruvian Christmas food which is best described as a lighter, fluffier, and much more delicious version of fruitcake. Each of the children present received a present bought by the church especially for him or her and everyone was happy and full of Christmas spirit. Not the same feeling I get at the Christmas Eve service at home, but still, the presence of a spirit of joy.

The service at the IEP Collique was less remarkable and less interesting, but along the same lines…talent show-esque with a sermon worked in there and Paneton and hot chocolate afterward.

Another interesting note –at both churches, where secular music, stories, really secular anything is often frowned-upon, the altars and front of the sanctuaries were decorated with what we call “tacky-Christmas-lights”, Christmas trees, and basically things you would never find in the sanctuary of a typical PCUSA church in the states. Like I said it’s interesting to see the differences across culture of what we to be sacred.

As I said earlier, there’s no Christmas Eve service. In fact, Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24^th, our Christmas Eve, at midnight. It’s much like our conception of New Years (or Michael Scott’s conception of marriage, if you’ve seen the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married). The whole extended family gathers at the home of some relative and waits anxiously for midnight, when they can officially begin Christmas dinner, a great feast in the middle of the night (quite a surprise for the stomach, since in Peru lunch is the biggest meal of the day and you don’t usually go to bed with a lot of food on your stomach). Christmas dinner consists of turkey, rice prepared with Coca-Cola (not kidding!), lots of other delicious dishes, and ends with (you guessed it!) Paneton!

Another exciting and totally new thing for me about Christmas is that at midnight, when it officially becomes “Christmas Day,” EVERYONE sets off fireworks. I mean everyone. I’m not sure about the legality of fireworks in Peru, but as my host family once reminded me, “prohibido” doesn’t really mean that much here. It’s bigger than any Fourth of July show I’ve ever seen, really an amazing sight. And such a contrast to the “Silent Night” that I think of when I think of Christmas night. It was a sight to be seen. I can honestly say I have never and probably never will again celebrate Christmas in such a loud, festive, boisterous way!

The 25^th, the big Christmas Day for us, is more of a day of rest in Peru. As you can imagine, if you started dinner in your relatives’ house across town at midnight the night before, you’re not much for waking up early on Christmas Morning. I think Alta and I got out of bed around noon. We went to Flor’s family’s house for Christmas lunch (we’d been with Eduardo’s family the night before) but before, as we were wrapping presents, made sure to listen to the Messiah (typical Christmas music at my house), Amy Grant Christmas songs (Typical Terpstra fam Christmas music), and Mannheim Steamroller, which feels like home to both of us. We also spent much of the time that she was here with me sitting on my bed harmonizing to Christmas Carols, mostly minor, of course!

At Flor’s family’s house we had another delicious turkey meal and did a Secret Santa gift exchange among the adults (all the kids got some sort of tricycle). Then we came back, crashed, I called my family and cried, Sarah talked with her host family from Huancavelica…and we ate some more Paneton. Not kidding. And that was it. That was Christmas. We left the next day for vacation (which will be my next blog post, coming soon, I promise). Very surreal, and looking back, it doesn’t feel like Christmas actually happened. It was just all so different. Like I said, I’m still very much processing it. If I come to any great insights about the interconnectedness of the whole world in the birth of the one poor child who changed the world (and there’s 10 million more who probably could…), I’ll be sure to let y’all know. But who knows. Come Christmas next year, maybe I’ll find myself feeling a little homesick for fireworks, summer weather, and of course Paneton!

Share the Well

News Year’s greetings, and my apologies for having gone a month between posts! Between Christmas, vacation, getting back into work, trying to plan for hiking the Inca Trail when my family comes in May (!!!), starting some new things at work (will write more about that another day) and sermon writing, I haven’t had much down time to dedicate to blogging about Christmas or traveling, though those will certainly be coming soon! But for now, I’ve got this long-overdue post to share with you!

As I sat on my bed last night, just having finished writing my third sermon, I realized that I hadn’t yet translated and posted my second sermon for you all to read! Which is a shame, really, because I preached it back at the end of November and actually liked what I wrote better than my first sermon.

(Notice I said what I wrote. I don’t think the delivery of this one was as good. That was probably a combination of many things, including too much caffeine, nerves from having all my fellow YAVs sitting in the congregation, and just having come off of our Thanksgiving retreat. But I am going to go ahead and blame it all on having played the card game “Nerts” for 2 hours before worship. If you have never played, it is THE MOST STRESSFUL card game in the world. Yet addicting. Curse you, Anna, why did you get me hooked on that darn game?)

Anyway, the sermon’s pretty self-explanatory (and fortunately delivery doesn’t count here because you’re reading it…hooray!), but I wanted to point out one item of interest. At the beginning of December, right after I’d preached this sermon and when I ought to have posted it on my blog, Andy put up an interesting blog post based on this exact same text. Check it out here. Our interpretations of the text are pretty similar (not really a surprise, if you know us), but he used the analogy of stone soup to explain this story to a Sunday school class, and apparently it really clicked with them. (If you don’t know what stone soup is, you should click on the words “stone soup” above…it’s a lot of fun, and it really is a great comparison!) So that’s all to say great minds think alike. Or crazy ones. Remains to be seen.

Sermon at la Ingeniería, 11/29/09

Mark 6:30-44

“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.

When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred dinarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’

Then Jesus ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.”

There’s nothing like a great feast. This Thursday, my friends from the United States and I celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday in which family and friends gather together and share a meal, giving thanks to God for all of God’s blessings. It can be anywhere between a small, intimate gathering and a grand, extravagant party. In my house, Thanksgiving usually includes my parents, grandparents, brothers, and me. But for my college roommate (hi Bizz!), every year there are more than 50 people! I think she told me once there were three turkeys. Talk about a family reunion!

This year was the first Thanksgiving that I did not celebrate with my family. And yes, it was hard to be so far from so many of the most important people in my life. But I was with good people, a new family of sorts. And, like always, we shared a meal. We ate turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and some of the best stuffing I’ve ever had (thanks Alissa!), continuously giving thanks go God. There is something special, something sacred, about sharing food in this manner.

Jesus also loved sharing meals with others. In the Gospels, he is always breaking bread with whoever, whatever type of person is around, and using food in his parables. For example, “The Kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” Or, “Therefore, every good tree will bear good fruit, but the bad tree will bear bad fruit.” Or how about, “Truly I tell you, the harvest is plenty, but the workers few.” “I am the bread of life, anyone who comes to me will never be hungry…” I could go on and on.

Our text today is an example of Jesus sharing a huge meal, one of 5,000 men and, as Matthew reminds us in his Gospel, this number doesn’t even include women and children! Now my roommate’s 50-person-Thanksgiving doesn’t seem so big anymore…

There are many ways in which we can interpret and learn from this text. I am going to use one of these to explain and preach this text tonight, and for some of you all, it might be a very different interpretation than the way in which you usually read this text. That is completely fine. In using my interpretation, I am not trying to negate other valid, educated attempts to read and understand this text. On the contrary, I want to affirm that within the many dimensions Mark has included in this story, there is a message that speaks directly to our economic, social, and ecological responsibility as Christians. And tonight, it is on this level that are going to encounter the Word of God.

That said, let’s look at the text:

At the beginning of the story, Jesus’s disciples have returned from their time of mission, and they are on their way to rest and, of course, eat with Jesus in a deserted place, far from civilization and the crowds seeking out Jesus to heal their sick and preach to them. But, as always, word spreads, and the crowds find Jesus. And, in his great compassion, Jesus accepts them and teaches them.

But afternoon turns into evening, and the disciples start to get worried – What are these people going to eat? The disciples know they’ve brought enough for their own dinner, but what’s going to happen to the crowds? They ask Jesus to dismiss them, to send them off to buy their own food.

And how does Jesus respond? “You give them something to eat.” Excuse me? The disciples? Provide food for more than 5,000 people? Jesus’s disciples were not rich men, or if they had been, they weren’t anymore, having left everything to follow him. We can understand their surprise, their frustration. 200 denarii, a very conservative estimate of what it would cost to buy enough food, was equivalent to eight months’ salary! They do not have this kind of money. Feeding all these people seems like a project far beyond what they are capable of.

But Jesus responds, “How many loaves do you have?” And in the end, between the loaves and fishes brought by the disciples and the crowd, Jesus feeds them all. And all ate and were satisfied.

It’s a miracle, is it not? All ate and were satisfied. The power and love of God are revealed in the parting, the sharing of bread. **Note – this is a play on words in Spanish. Parting is partiendo and sharing is compartiendo…so this line is a bit cleverer than it appears…**

If I understand the text, Jesus is trying to teach us that there is enough. He didn’t call down bread from Heaven, bring it in from somewhere else – the food was already there. Jesus shared what they had, and it was enough.

There is enough. This is a bold declaration, isn’t it? In a world of hunger, how can we say there is enough food? In a world of pollution and waste, how can we say there is enough water? In a world where we exploit nature and destroy the environment, in a world of Global Warming, how can we say there is enough space, enough natural resources, enough life, even, for everyone? It is in fact a very bold proclamation. But it is the proclamation of Jesus, and as Christians, it is our joy and our responsibility to live this reality and this proclamation.

I encountered this reality last month, in the jungle of Tingo María. I was on a retreat with my fellow YAVs in Huánuco, and we went to Tingo María for a day to climb waterfalls. It was my first time in a jungle – there is no jungle in my country. And I can say with completely sincerity, that I have never seen anything like the nature in the jungle. One of the other YAVs said it better than I can: “This is a place where life just wants to live.” It’s abundance. It’s harmony. It’s the creation of God. And in this creation, there is enough.

But if there is enough, what happened? Well, we know what happened, right? It’s what would have happened if Jesus had not been with the people that day in the desert. Those who had food would have eaten well and those who didn’t have food would have gone home hungry. This is how it is in our world today. With food, with water, with all of our natural resources. A few have too much and others, the majority, don’t have enough. Many don’t have any at all. We have forgotten Jesus’s miracle, the miracle of sharing. Instead of abundance, we have greed. Instead of harmony, we have selfishness. We waste and squander God’s creation. We distribute resources unjustly, and if we don’t change our ways right now, we are going to destroy the world that God has created and has called good.

Understanding this grave truth, we hear the good news of Jesus that, if we can learn to share, there will be enough for everyone. It is important for us to notice that this text doesn’t say that when, because of our sins and greed, there isn’t enough, God will intervene and will provide what we need. This is very dangerous theology. Very dangerous because it gives us permission to consume freely, to waste our natural resources, our gifts from God, and to justify ourselves saying, “The Lord will provide.” It’s dangerous. It’s harmful.

I’m not saying that the Lord doesn’t provide. God already has provided. And it is now our responsibility to care for and share that with which God has provided us.

Jesus looked for what bread the people already had, he blessed it, and he broke it. And all ate and were satisfied. The miracle of this story is not that food was provided but that food was shared. In the presence of Jesus, we can share what we have and there is enough.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us share in every moment. Let us remember that justice for God’s people and care for the future of God’s creation are our responsibilities. Let us not squander that which God has given us.

There is enough. Living in simplicity, let us share with one another. Only then will we truly live in the abundance of God. Amen.

The Birth of the Rebel Jesus (Reconsidering Ronald Reagan)

´´When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.´´ -Archbishop Dom Hélder Camara

First of all, merry Christmas! As I celebrate Christmas in an entirely new way (expect a post on how Christmas is celebrated here in the next month…but I want to wait to write that until I’ve actually celebrated it!), know that I am thinking of and praying for each of you and hoping that you have a joyful holiday season.

This Christmas post has an admittedly strange subject (Ronald Reagan and the effect of U.S. neoliberal economic policies on Latin America), but it’s inspired by and structured around Jackson Browne’s beautiful, tongue-in-cheek, and profoundly challenging ballad “The Rebel Jesus.” Stanzas of the song will be included in italics. I recommend taking the time to listen to the song itself in this video.

Before proceeding any farther, I want to admit up front that this post is going to be honest and strongly opinionated. I recognize that, and I know that many of you will disagree with me. I know that many of you (including my dear parents – Hi Mom, Hi Dad) voted for Ronald Reagan. Many agree that his ideas of capitalism and neoliberal economics are in fact the best way to govern our country and our world. At least one of you (hello James, if you’re reading this) sleeps with a framed picture of the man next to your bed! Forgive me then, friends, if I speak too strongly. My purpose is not to offend you but to offer a different perspective, one widely held in Peru and as far as I know among the majority of the Latin American world (not including the proportionally miniscule rich aristocracy), on policies that we often take for granted as “necessary to defend democracy and freedom.” I want to offer you the perspective, as far as I understand it, of those who have lived through the negative effects of these policies and who know better than any of us ever could that in the economic and foreign policy decisions of the United States, there are Lives in the Balance.

All that said, let us begin:

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season,
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children.
And the families hurrying to their homes,
As the sky darkens and freezes,
Will be gathering around their hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God’s graces
And the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

Many of you know that I tend to identify myself more with the left end of the political/theological/economic spectrum (Understatement? Yes.) And because of that, I have encountered many difficulties working with the more theologically and socially conservative Protestant church here in Peru. However, something very interesting I’ve noticed is that regardless of how conservative the people I’ve met are in their religious beliefs or understanding of personal moral conduct (no dancing, no drinking, etc.), none of them are economically conservative as we define it in the United States. And they all have their fair share of complaints about the policies of good ole’ George W. Bush.

But then again, that’s not really that remarkable. Most people in the States have their fair share of complaints about W. Bush-bashing is the cool thing to do. Heck, even the Dixie Chicks are doing it. What may come as more of a surprise to my readers is the virtually unanimous criticism of Ronald Reagan.

The United States loves to glorify Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics. Military strength. The Fall of Communism. Reviving our investment-centered economy. Though of course the inherent goodness of any of these things is certainly debatable (and I would be willing to talk about any of them with you, if you would like), the fact of the matter is that our national history generally remembers Reagan as a president who, in the face of any struggle, did all he could to serve the interests of the United States of America.

Well they call him by the Prince of Peace
And they call him by the Savior,
And they pray to him upon the sea
And in every bold endeavor,
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worship him
From a temple to a robber’s den,
In the words of the Rebel Jesus.

And you know, despite what I or anyone else might say about the long-term effects of his policies on our country, the above is true: Ronald Reagan consistently did all he could to protect and serve the United States. But in the eyes of the people I’ve talked to here in Peru, that’s exactly the problem. Reagan was always looking out for the United States. And whether we like it or not, he lived then and we live today in a global community. The president of the world’s greatest superpower (or one of the world’s two greatest superpowers, in Reagan’s time) cannot justifiably look out for the interests of his or her country alone.

Some of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy blunders are well-known, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, where the administration, likely with Reagan’s blessing, used money that it had illegally gained from selling arms to Iran to, also illegally, support a right-wing, essentially terrorist group in Nicaragua working to overthrow the democratically-elected leftist Sandinista government. Other similar but lesser-known stories arise all over Latin America (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama) with the same pattern: US aids right-wing, military overthrow of a popular government that we perceive as a “potential Communist threat.”

However, undoubtedly, when we think about the foreign policy of Reagan, the major even that comes to mind is the end of the Cold War. A milestone in history that any history book I’ve ever read regards as one of the greatest accomplishments in 20th-century history. And certainly there were good things that came from it; the Soviet Union didn’t have a great human rights record either, to say the least, and there are ways in which its demise contributed to human freedom, health, and dignity. However, one has to ask, was Reagan really “assuring the safety of the world in the face of a Communist threat” by building up our nuclear arms program? Was his ideal of neoliberal capitalism really the way to protect individual rights and liberties? After all, what about the rights to life, food, water, shelter, and health that the poor, in the US and abroad, were effectively denied by these policies? Why did the “great and legendary” president of a country that was to be the “beacon of light and freedom in the world” increase funds to the military but decrease healthcare spending? Where these policies really about the good of the world, or were they to protect our own interests?

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year, when Christmas comes,
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They’d get the same as the Rebel Jesus.

But the point of this post isn’t just to criticize the attitude and actions of Ronald Reagan and the policies of his administration. Because the fact of the matter is that Ronald Reagan, or George Bush, or Joseph Stalin, or Adolph Hitler, or any other well known historical figure who has played a role in serious human rights abuses, did not do it on his/her own. The blame extends even outside the circle of their administrations and direct supporters. The self-centered political and economic rhetoric so evident in the foreign policy of the Reagan administration existed in our country long before Reagan was born. George W. Bush did not detain Muslim-Americans after 9/11 without our fearful assertion that this was in fact the best way to detect Homeland Security, nor did his father send political refugees from Haiti to the inhumane, concentration-camp-esque living conditions of Guantanamo Bay without our xenophobia to support him. Stalin and Hitler would not have been able to commit the atrocities they did without the masses of people who believed in what they preached and without powerful countries like the US and Great Britain initially turning a blind eye to what was going on in Germany and Russia. The responsibility for what happens to our brothers and sisters living in other countries does not lie solely with our heads of state and elected officials. It belongs to you and to me.

I’m currently reading a book called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer, the doctor and human rights activist about whom Mountains Beyond Mountains is written. Writing about his experience working as a doctor of the poor in Haiti, Peru, Cuba, Russia, and the United States, Farmer focuses on the root problem of the diseases he treats, which he calls structural violence. While he chooses to spend less time defining it and more time demonstrating it through patients’ life stories and real life situations, some of us (like myself) like more concrete definitions. So for those other Meyers-Briggs J’s out there, structural violence is, as I understand it, the existence of political and economic systems that, while they may not directly wage war against people (as the US did with the Contras in Nicaragua), perpetuate inequalities and lead to the inescapable suffering and death of the poor and oppressed.

This is hard stuff – harder still when we hear Farmer’s diagnosis that a great deal of the structural violence in the world is caused by the neoliberal economic policies of our dear old US of A. Whether we want to admit it or not, the lives of many of the world’s destitute are affected by our daily decisions. Where does the food we eat come form, the clothes we wear, the oil we use? I challenge you to start asking that question, and if you don’t know the answers, to do some research. I warn you, the answers you find will probably disturb you. This is not a fun exercise. But it is, I believe, the only way to begin to construct a truly peaceful world, free of the overt and covert violence that plague our world today. The only way to begin to construct the Kingdom of God.

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to compete with
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There’s a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure, and I bid you cheer,
From the heathen and the pagan
On the side of the Rebel Jesus.

And this, perhaps, is why this Christmas season, I ask you to reconsider Ronald Reagan. I ask you to look at a president that the we the rich of America have idolized (and sometimes the poor too, for that matter) and remember those whose lives and families were torn apart by the violence, actual and structural, that his policies created in the Latin American world.

And here I return to the quote by Dom Helder Camara with which I began. Here in Peru, I have the opportunity to “serve the poor.” But what good is it for us to serve the poor if we don’t work to change the systems and situations that have cursed some people to be poor in the first place? And what good am I really doing offering my time and assistance if I continue to live my life according to the oppressive and violent structures that give me a nice free T-shirt but don’t pay the Haitians who made my shirt a fair wage with which to feed their families? (Just for the record, I chose Haiti for that example by looking at the tag of the T-shirt I’m currently wearing. What’s worse – it’s a shirt from a church event! I’m telling you, friends, this structural violence has just become an ingrained and acceptable part of our culture.)

So friends and family, merry Christmas. Know that on this special day, it is hard for me to be far from you. But I take comfort in the knowledge that December 25th, we will be united in a celebration of joy, peace, giving, love, and perhaps even the overturning of structural violence. Feliz Navidad a todos. Let us celebrate the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

This is the Air I Breathe...

Those of you who have similar tastes in music to me or who actually click on the hyperlinks I put in here know that very often my titles or just random lines in my blog are quotes from songs that really speak to me. Those of you who know me well, then, should be confused and perhaps a little bit concerned to see that the title of this post is a quote from a cheesy contemporary Christian song by one of the MANY Christian pop divas (Let’s call her Rachel Nicole St. Knapp, shall we?) who, in my oh-so-humble opinion, all sound exactly the same. Have 3 months away from home really changed my tastes in music that much? Has the theological conservatism of the churches I’m working with gotten to me?

The answer, of course, is no, which will undoubtedly relieve some of you and disappoint others. I just thought the title would be an interesting and ironic segue into what I want to talk about. For the record, the song is called “Breathe” and is by Rebecca St. James. The first verse goes:

“This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me.”

It goes on and on, and you know, it’s sweet, but musically rather boring and not at all lyrically profound. But what I want to share with you today is about the actual air I breathe. And while I certainly believe in the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, this air is not “God’s holy presence living in me.”

The air that I, along with everyone else in Carabayllo and northern Comas, breathe smells like shit. I apologize for the language, but there’s really no other way to describe the foul odor that has permeated every bit of my being for the last several weeks. The smell comes from outside but since every Peruvian home has some sort of open air courtyard inside, it’s everywhere. I wake up with it in the morning and go to bed with it at night. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes have to walk with my shirt over my nose, looking like some bad imitation of a bank robber. It’s foul. It’s nauseating. Disgusting. There’s no other way to describe it. The air I breathe smells like shit.

I guess the next logical question is why does it smell this way? Well you see, there’s a nearby lake or some sort of body of water into which much of our district’s sewage is dumped. On hot summer days (which is at least 5 days a week, and yes, I live in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s summer here), the sewage-infused lake water evaporates, and the wind brings this delightful evaporated-sewage-water into the city. The beautiful mountains that I enjoy every day and through which we took our caminata in September trap this air, the sun gets hotter, the smell gets worse…you get the picture.

Living and working in one of the poorest sections of a big city is teaching me a lot about pollution and environmental abuse. Things that I never could have experienced in Richmond’s West End Suburbia, or the beautiful and idyllic campus of William and Mary, where it’s still 1693, just with wireless internet everywhere. The grass and trees I’ve always take for granted struggle to survive here. In their place are dust and trash. Often burning trash, which doesn’t really help with the smell.

I don’t say these things to paint a picture of Peru as a dirty, ecologically irresponsible country. On the contrary, I want to share with you the reality in which many people, myself now one of them, live, and ask each of you to reflect for a minute on your place in the big picture of environmental destruction. I know I’ve done my fair share of damage. It’s so easy for us to do in our comfortable Northern lives. Though we will soon enough, right now we don’t experience the direct impact of our actions. Sure, the summers are warmer, but we can fix that with just a little more AC. We hear about glaciers melting, the water supply diminishing, but our sinks still work, and when thirsty, it’s not hard to find a glass of cold water. Most places will give it to you for free!

Things are different in the barrios of Carabayllo and Comas. You see, people in Peru, as in many countries around the world, don’t have the “luxury” to sit around debate whether Global Warming “exists.” It’s a part of their daily reality. The days are hotter, the sun is brighter. Summer comes and winter ends, both a month earlier than they used to. It rains when it shouldn’t, but the expected rains don’t come. Glaciers in the Andes that are essential water sources for the mountain provinces like Huacavelica are disappearing faster than anyone imagined. Water towers here in Lima read “Water is Life, Be Careful with Every Drop.”

The shortage of water is what I personally notice the most. The water for our neighborhood is shut off nearly every night, and Eduardo explained to me that this has become necessary in recent years to ensure that the supply of clean water is able to last all summer. The water at the IEP Collique where I work with the Compassion Program, is shut off every day after about 2. Large buckets of water sit in the bathrooms for the afternoon kids to wash their hands and fill their toilet bowls. It’s all just expected at this point. Like Eduardo said, it’s the only way there will ever be enough water to last the summer.

We just finished a short environmental unit with the 9 to 12-year-olds at Collique. We talked with them about the environmental problems that Peruvians face in their daily lives. Global warming and the shortage of water, contaminated food and water, and the toxic wastes produced by mining companies like American-owned Doe Run in La Oroya (please click here to read Joe´s latest blog on the subject...also watch the video he has included) and watch the video, by the way), the list goes on. Then we did a unit with them on the good ol’ 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. I was really struck by the way the teacher of the class explained reusing, once again on the theme of water. She challenged the kids to find less-traditional ways to reuse water in their households. Use the water you used to wash the rice to bathe. Then take that water and throw it on the floor before you sweep (floors lie somewhere on the spectrum between dirt and concrete, and it’s necessary to wet the floor before sweeping so you don’t generate a ton of dust). It was a truly humbling experience for me to hear these kids, most of whom live in one-room, dirt-floor houses without personal access to water, talking about resource preservation. Honestly, it made even my bi-weekly bucket showers here seem a little extravagant and luxurious. While the wealthy like myself take running-water showers daily and literally play with water as if it were a toy, the poorest people that I have met are bathing themselves in the bucket of water they used to wash the rice. The inconsistency bothers me, as I hope it does you.

Those of you who follow the liturgical calendar (or some, like Laura, who take it upon themselves to ENFORCE the liturgical calendar!) know that we are now in the season of Advent, preparing ourselves for the coming of Christmas and re-opening ourselves every year to the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth in the form of one of “the least of these.” I challenge you all, as I challenge myself this Christmas season, to ask yourselves if the coming of Christ has more to do with lights, trees, and nativity scenes, or with a pail of water, carefully and lovingly siphoned out so as to take only what is necessary and share faithfully with others.

You Took the Word and Made it Heard

The title of this post comes from the Ben Folds song Not the Same. (For those of you who don’t know, click on the song title and the link will take you to a YouTube video of it.) The entire quote is as follows:

You took the Word and made it heard
And eased the people’s pain, and for that
You were idolized, immortalized,
And you were not the same after that.

I use this as my post title mostly because this post is about my first preaching experience here in Peru (which we in the PCUSA call Preaching the Word, one half of ministry, the other being the 2 sacraments.) However, I challenge you all to think for a minute about what this song has to say to us if you understand the “you” to be Jesus of Nazareth. (I recognize that has some controversial implications – if you have anything to say, please, post a comment! That’s a big part of why I do this whole blog thing…to get your feedback so that you can share in this adventure with me.) I don’t think this interpretation of the song is too far-fetched, by the way, as Ben has already sung in the first verse about a friend who, after a drug trip at the top of a tree, gave his life to Jesus (those of you who know Ben Folds know this really isn’t that strange compared to some of his lyrics!). So stew on that for awhile and let me know what you think.

Oh, and I am by no means trying to sound pompous or make messianic claims about myself by using the same words to refer to myself and to Jesus Christ. I just thought it would make a catchy post title about “the Word.”

Speaking of the Word, have you heard the Word is love? Whether you have or not, you should check out this video of Common Ground, my college a cappella group singing “The Word” by the Beatles at their Homecoming Concert. I’m so proud of them! And of course let me give credit where credit’s due: Thanks to Meredith Rutledge for suggesting this song for us to sing, Stefanie Higgins for an incredible arrangement, Joy Dudley for a beautiful solo, Cathy “Shmoo” Reber for some amazing percussion, and Liz MacMurry, Stacy Yi, Kristen Pantazes, Elizabeth Smith, Ethyl Yap, and Lizzy Jensen for this performance, and all members of Common Ground, past and present, for being awesome. Watch it, I swear, it’s incredible.

Ok, ok, on to the actual subject of this post – my first preaching experience in Peru (which, incidentally, was my first “real” preaching experience ever!). I preached Sunday night, October 18, for maybe 15 or 20 people at the IEP Ingeniería as part of the month’s theme of “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” While the IEP still doesn’t ordain women to ministry, me preaching as a woman was not incredibly radical for this church – laypeople preach every Sunday night, and while the majority are men, I know that at least one other woman member has preached since I’ve been part of the church and it seemed to be accepted fairly well, with the understanding that she was a layperson, not an ordained minister. Still, 2 (myself included) out of 8 or so is nowhere near equality, and the church is very divided about the ordination of women. During my first month here, I helped lead a church-wide workshop/discussion on the ordination of women and saw that even in one of the more progressive churches of the denomination, there is still plenty of resistance. Preaching in this context, knowing that I was participating in a potentially revolutionary movement of holy subversion, was both very humbling and very empowering for me, and I hope it was the same for the men and women who graciously received my sermon.

Below is an English translation of what I preached that night. To hear clips of the sermon in my weak-but-improving Spanish, check out the Red Uniendo Manos’s Podcast Kuzka, created by fellow YAV Joe Tobiason. He’s put a lot of work into publishing information about the Red Uniendo Manos, the organization here that I’m working for, on the internet where anyone can access it. Also check out the English translation of the Red’s monthly newsletter, the Retama? I’m being serious, click on these links, it’s a much more comprehensive explanation of what we are doing in Peru than my blogs, since Joe’s official job is to publish this stuff, while mine is to chase screaming children around a church (that is of course not my whole job…but some days I think I spend more time doing that than anything else! Oh the joy of 5-year-olds!).

Anyway, the sermon:

Scripture: Micah 6:6-8: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Our theme this month is “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” We’ve talked about the Reformation itself with Martin Luther in the 17th century, and we’ve also discussed the motto, the slogan of the Reformation: A Reformed Church, Always Reforming. I want to talk a little bit more about this theme tonight. The Reformation was a very important and climactic moment for the Church as a whole and particularly for our respective traditions, the PCUSA and the IEP. But I believe that the most important role of the Reformation for us, for the Church today, is to remind us that in every century, every age, we need to be open to the continual reformation of our thoughts, our hearts, and our lives in accordance with the Will of God. And for this, we go to the prophet Micah of the 8th century BCE.

Honestly, we don’t know much for sure about the life of the prophet Micah. As I said, he lived and prophetized in the 8th century BCE, when the nation we casually refer to as “Israel” was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. This century was a time of fear for both kingdoms because they consistently felt the threat of Assyria, the daunting political superpower to the north.

As Martin Luther denounced the sins of the Catholic Church in the 18th century, Micah, in his own context, prophetized against two great sins that he saw in the people of Israel and Judah: the worship of Gods other than Yahweh and the creation and maintenance of unjust social structures that exploited the poor at the expense of the rich. Micah proclaimed that the people needed to repent of their actions and change their ways of live. But how? What is acceptable before the eyes of God?

And this is where we enter with tonight’s text. The text begins with a series of questions. This should be fairly obvious, but it’s important that we know that the implied answer to each question is “no.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?”

No.

“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?”

No.

“Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

No, not even this.

Micah renounces these appeals to sacrifice. In our modern, Christian context, this doesn’t seem that strange or radical. Of course we don’t offer burnt sacrifices to God. It’s not part of our religious practices. Truthfully, when we think about sacrifices in this sense, we often think of paganism, of things that have no relation to “our Christianity.” But such a reading misses the point because that’s not how it was for the communities of Israel and Judah. Burnt offerings were their way to worship, to pray, to communicate with God. To ask and receive pardon. All of the very specific and sacred rules and instructions are written in the Old Testament. Burnt sacrifices were to them like worship services, prayers, and Bible study are to us.

It’s easy for us to forget this, but it’s the essential element to understand the text. Micah is not simply offering his people new ways to praise the Lord and follow God’s will. Micah is telling them that their current established practices are worthless if they don’t behave, in both a personal and social context, like followers of God. I believe this point comes across more clearly in a passage from Isaiah, the most famous prophet of Micah’s time. It is Isaiah 1:11, 15-17, if you want to look for it. In this passage, Isaiah, speaking as the voice of God, asks:

“The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?...I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams an the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

If I understand these texts, Micah and Isaiah are telling the eighth-century Hebrews and us, modern-day readers, that our religious practices are empty if we are not living in accordance with the Will of God. Just like Martin Luther told the 18th-century Catholic Church. Just like Jesus told the Pharisees in his time on earth. And just like the Word of God tells us today. If we say that we are “Reformed Church,” we need to remain always open to the possibility of new reforms.

And finally, in verse 8, Micah gives us his answer.

“He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

This is how we live as followers of God. In every age and century, this is how we make certain that our religious practices are not empty but are in fact full, full of the love of God. This is how we know we are following the Will of God.

But how do we do this? Here it’s more complicated, isn’t it? Because although the Word of God doesn’t change, contexts and situations do. And it is for this that God has given us the Holy Spirit, manifested in our minds and hearts. With this Word and this Spirit, we, the people of God, can make our humble attempts at discerning the Will of God in our own contexts.

Let us return now to “the answer” in Micah 6:8, where Micah tells us what God has called “good.” Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God. These three simple things are what God requires of us.

But still, what does this mean in our present context? I don’t have the final answer; no one does. But I can offer you ideas from my own life and my own experiences. They are not comprehensive: this is only my humble understanding of part of the Will of God. But, if I may, I would like to offer these thoughts to you.

Do justice. Here we see our relationships with the world. We must treat every other person, every part of Creation with justice. But what is “justice”, really? Often, when we think of justice, we think of a severe judge handing out punishments. But I want to propose another definition because this first understanding is our human distortion of the word. In the Kingdom of God, justice is simply that which serves love. Love for God, love for all people, love for Creation.

In this manner, when we conserve our natural resources, we do justice. When we denounce poverty and the structures that cause it, we do justice. When he help our brothers and sisters, when we help people we don’t know, when we help people we don’t even like, we do justice. Justice is that which serves love. And with this definition, justice and mercy are not the opposites that we often make them – they are two complementary parts of the Reign and Will of God.

Which brings us to the second part: Love mercy. This has to do with our relationships with others. And notice that it’s not “act with mercy” or “behave mercifully,” it says love mercy. Loving mercy has to do not just with our actions, but with our hearts and the thoughts and feelings behind our actions. When we respect the humanity of every person, we love mercy. When we care for those whom society has rejected, we love mercy. When we forgive our friends and our enemies not seven times but, as Jesus tells us, seventy times seven times, we love mercy. It is an act of profound humility.

And this brings us to the third part: Walk humbly with your God. Here we are talking about our relationship with God and with ourselves. The Church in every age has committed the sin of triumphalism, of pridefully thinking that we have the final answer and understand fully the mystery of God. Of acting as if we are God. This was the sin of the priests in Micah’s time, of the Pharisees in that of Jesus, of the Catholic Church in that of Martin Luther, and sometimes, it is our own sin.

Admitting that, how do we walk humbly with our God? We put the Will of God, which desires the well-being of the whole world, before our own wills. We admit that we are not always right and do not always know the truth, or what we ought to do. We accept help from God and from others. We make ourselves the servants of all. Each time we behave in this way, we walk humbly with our God.

We are the people of God. God has created us to do God’s work. But we are also humans, sinners. Yes, God has shown us what is good, but we are going to fail, both as individuals and as a Church. But we can be and we must be open to the new reforms of each day. The reforms that bring us closer to the will of God. And what is God’s Will?

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God.