Haiti
Janet Fullmer
Seminarian
Church of the Redeemer

Thanks, warm greetings and love from our first visit; we have felt part of this warm, welcoming, loving family.

We bring greetings from Colorado- friends and family, and feel you're part of that family, too

It was special joy to be here for Cursillo Sunday last week. We made ours in 1997 and it changed our lives, by showing us a fullness of joy and fellowship in the Body of Christ that we had never known before.

Ron and I had left the church- and faith- behind during our college days; we had come back before Cursillo-but we had not found the joy and intimacy with Christ, and the passion to serve with love and abandon, that we discovered through the intentional spiritual journey that Cursillo offered.

Everybody has their own experience at Cursillo, and each is somewhat different-but I know that it will be powerful and that God will be with you. The sharing of stories of God's presence in each of our lives is so powerful that you'll want to do more of it-and I want to do it with you this year -So Go!

In the meantime, I want to share one part of my story today-this part takes place in Haiti, and I thought of it immediately when I read today's Gospel.

Ron and I went to Haiti on a medical mission in Jan 2000-we had been to rural Mexico, and the slums of our cities-but we had never seen such desperation and poverty that we saw in Haiti. From air, mud (cause by the erosion of top soil that has resulted from the deforestation to make charcoal, the only source of heat for many of the people); we found that on ground, the people are hopelessly crowded, without sanitation, electricity, shelter, food; many people wear rags if they have clothing at all. On the day we left the capital city of Port au Prince, we rode in the back of a truck- camion- through the streets. We left on Sunday morning because it was safer and easier travel then, but even so, we got stuck in the horrendous traffic jam that is an ever-present part of Carrefours, one of the poorest and most desperate parts of Haiti.

In the midst of sitting in the truck while people were banging on the sides of our truck begging-some demanding-food, money, something-anything-I felt not only overwhelmed, but also that the whole situation was incredibly surreal. We were surrounded by filth and need and anger and death on the one hand, and on the other, we saw brightly painted buses and trucks called tap-taps, (both of which were so crowded that people couldn't move-and dangerous, because they had bald tires, windows that were just holes cut out of the metal with a blowtorch-no trim or cushioning from the sharp edges)-and on those tap-taps were pictures of Jesus, and sayings in french or creole, of: Thank you Jesus! God is Good! My Blessed Sweet Saviour!

The contrast between the needs and the expressions of Thanks and God's Goodness seemed too shocking to comprehend-and so I said in silent prayer, "How Lord-How can these people say you are Good! How can they not think they are abandoned by you!" And as quickly as that prayer question formed itself in my mind, that quickly I was given a different view of the situation.

God gave to me a view that I can only describe as being from above- literally, a bird's-eye view: in it, I saw what the dust and noise and stench had obscured from my view in the truck-I saw that in the midst of the chaos, some people were helping others; some gave scraps of food to their children, some helped those trying to jump onto trucks to do so without injury, and others shielded the old and infirm from the wheels of the trucks that would have run over them.

The bright colors and slogans on the busses seemed to me to reflect God's love of these people; it was if the colors absorbed and reflected God's love. These people could only look to God for their daily bread and sustenance; they were poor and desperate, and they were not deluded by thinking that they deserved what they got-they knew better. They knew that No one deserved what they got: be it nothing, little, enough or abundance:

And yet, they who had nothing, looked to God-for they knew that there was no help that was not from God.

As I came to see that point of view, I saw, for the first time, the great number of churches, missions, aid huts with crosses, and religious centers that were sprinkled throughout the area; and then, up on a hill, little girls in white dresses with ribbons around their waists, little boys with white shirts and bowties, came out of a church singing the hymn that's unmistakable whatever language it's sung in, Amazing Grace.

And surely it was Amazing Grace. God was present-present in the people in such great need helping each other; present in those not in need, seeing the need and coming to help; present in those praising Him. His Grace covered all.

This is, in the end, is, I think, the whole point of today's gospel-it is only by God's Amazing Grace that we have anything at all. And by His grace, when we have His presence, we have everything we need.

And while God gives freely and generously of His love, when we look only with our eyes of the world, and judge by our own understanding and standards, we will see gross inequities in the lives of God's people. Sometimes, as in Haiti, and as we saw in the Gulf Coast following Katrina, God's generous provision of food, the necessities of basic living, jobs-will be distorted or destroyed by the unfair and exploitative actions of people; Sometimes, as in today's parable [and as we each have plenty of examples of from our own experience], God's provision is such that those who have worked the hardest get no more than, or less, than those who work the least. Fairness, as we understand it, then, is not the governing principle. If we are looking at it from the perspective of this world and its things, We might sometimes ask, If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, do we want it?!

And we surely might say "No, thank you!"

I think Jesus' parables are meant to bring us to an appreciation of the dramatic change in expectations that is required to understand- and embrace- the Kingdom of Heaven. This parable begins by telling us that, "the Kingdom of Heaven is like this:" and, like the parable of the unjust slave that we heard last week, the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus describes is not what we expect or want!

There is an aspect of this parable that I think is particularly telling: Jesus tells us that the workers who worked all day in the scorching heat were paid last-and that they knew that the others had been paid the same amount as they had been promised. The landowner could have paid them first, and they'd have left by the time the last were paid-then they'd not have known that the latecomers were paid the same as they were, and they would not have come to expect to be paid more.

But the parable makes it clear that the Kingdom is like this: you will know the disparity! You will know that the Kingdom is not what you think it is. God's righteousness and goodness means that you will get what you were promised, but others will too! Last week we heard that You will be forgiven, but you must forgive others; this week we hear that you will get paid your due, but they will get paid your due, rather than the lesser they earned! Is this the good news that we expect? That we want?

And there's more-the tables of our expectations will be turned over another way-Jesus ends today's parable by telling us, "the last will be first, and the first will be last."

This is both good news, and challenging news-but it's not entirely new news. The lesson Jonah and Ninevah makes clear that we are not to sulk when the people we think are slackers or worse are the ones given God's favor: God gives us what we need, and He is generous and forgiving beyond any expectation we have!

I recall Haiti in the Psalmists' call to praise God's greatness, and to glorify God. We are not promised us that we will get what we deserve-or that others will get what they deserve-[thanks be to God!] We are called to trust, and to praise our generous and gracious God.

Paul's letter to the Philippians shows us the way-it exhorts us to live firm in the faith of the Gospel-to look only to Christ, not to the things of this earth, where the disparities and inequities of God's favor as we see it will surely cause us to question what God is doing!

To say "Amen" to this requires us to have a radical notion of God's grace and goodness, and to have a radical faith that allows us to look beyond the things and situations of this earth, and to look instead to God's presence in them, and with us. When we do these things, we can rejoice and rest in the certainty that the Kingdom of Heaven is Good! It is where God is.

I'd like to end in the words of today's Collect, which so beautifully captures today's lessons:

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen