December 7, 2008
(Second Sunday of Advent)

Hold Me High Over Your Head

Photo of The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Isaiah 40:1-11  •  Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13  •  2 Peter 3:8-15a  •  Mark 1:1-8
(From The Lectionary Page)

The village of Mogoditshane is 15 kilometers outside of Botswana’s capital city of Gaborone.  This village is home to St. Peter’s Anglican Church and Day Care Center. The Center opened officially in October as a day care center for children too young to enter public school. These children are orphans due to AIDS/HIV.  The Day Care Center is at its maximum capacity of 90 children.  The waiting list is enormous.

The rector of St. Peter’s is Father Andrew Mudereri, and his wife, Gladys, runs the Day Care Center.  The Center began in the nave of St. Peter’s. The pews and chairs were stacked to one side during the week. A modest kitchen about the size of what you would find in an efficiency apartment provided the meals. The restroom was located across the parking lot in the rectory.

This past October, a new facility was dedicated by the Bishop of Botswana.  The center includes a small commercial kitchen, four classrooms, a sick bay, office, and restrooms. The tile floors are swept every time the children move from one area to another.

When our West Missouri delegation of eight arrived, most of the children were on the playground.  They hesitated only a moment when seeing us pile out of van, and then smiled and waved. Gladys and Fr. Andrew gave us a tour of the Center. We learned about the educational program, the meal and snacks provided, and the need for school supplies, kitchen equipment, clothing for the children and money for salaries.

A highlight of the visit came as all 90 children were gathered into one classroom.  Dr. Martha Colville from St. Alban’s Church, Bolivar, had brought with her rag dolls made by parishioners. Martha had packed her two suitcases using those plastic bags which then have the air vacuum out of them. Thanks to this method she packed over 100 dolls in her luggage.  Martha and Mary Howe and Dennis Robinson, our committee chair, had the privilege of presenting each children with a rag doll.  Our digital pictures do not do justice to the joy and smiles and laughter the quilted dolls provided.

The Very Rev. Terry White visits children in Botswana
Photo by Mary Howe
See articles and more photos in the December 2008 West Missouri Spirit

The children sang two thank you songs, and we headed out the classroom doors for a last look at the church and the playground.  Eventually all the children made it to the playground. And as we headed to our van some twenty yards away, it was as if Fr. Andrew waved a green a flag, and a sea of smiling faces ran and latched onto us.  “Me, me, me” they squealed, meaning “please hold me high over your head.”  It was a wonderful workout. The children shared an endless treasure of laughs and giggles and hugs.  Bishop Howe gave a term to that event, calling it: chaotic love. And I’m guessing it might appear in his Christmas Eve sermon.

Until that experience, my reading of today’s Isaiah passage, and the Gospel’s reference to a voice crying in the wilderness, had been  exclusively of a voice sternly calling for repentance and a change of lifestyle.  Today, hearing that passage of a voice crying in the wilderness, I hear 90 children’s voices, the voices of orphans, saying:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

I find the children’s voices compelling.  The need for all of God’s people to change, to turn away from indifference and incarnate compassion is at the heart of Advent’s message.  My heart changes not because I am shamed or scolded, but when I am touched authentically by God’s love.  And that is how the heart of the Church changes as well.

Botswana is a country about the size of Texas. The population is a little less than 2 million people. The rate of AIDS/HIV infection at one point was 37%, but now thanks to a strong government program of education and medical treatment, the rate has dropped to closer to 20%. Still the AIDS epidemic has taken a tremendous toll. Bishop Mwamba says the country, and thus his diocese, has 100,000 orphans to care for, and it is hard to estimate how many of them are HIV positive as well.

One hope of the companion link between our two dioceses is the creation of a church-run health care system. Many of you have gifts that could help Botswana’s dream become a reality.

This homily is but the first of several that will reflect on this experience that for me, no drama intended, was life-changing.   I will work hard not to bore you with stories, and not to make references too often. But at the same time, we are connected to people throughout the world. What we do here matters to people elsewhere, and impacts people elsewhere. Plus, we have much to learn from other cultures, and about how people in those cultures express our common Christian Faith and Anglican Tradition.

Setswana, the other language of Botswana including English, uses the word pula for money, rain, and God’s blessing.  In terms of money, the exchange rate is 8 pula to $1US. Money as a blessing from God, in exactly the same way rain is a blessing from heaven, is important for this Western to remember. Rain is for the common good. So is money.

One goal of the trip which was certainly achieved was that of building relationships. It was clear that as Americans, and as American Anglicans, many in that part of Africa were cautious around us. Did we care about them? Could we respect them? Were we ugly Americans?

We listened to their concerns. The host family I stayed with for several nights spoke of these things, as did many we met in congregations, day care centers, orphanages, and a hospice setting.  We worked to represent the people of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of West Missouri as fellow Anglicans willing to listen, and learn, and grow in understanding with our sisters and brothers in Botswana.  By God’s grace, we did good work.

In the coming weeks I will tell you more about the trip, including my experience preaching at St. Peter’s Church, Mogoditshane; meeting with church leaders in tiny villages who take their Anglican heritage very seriously; the generosity of all we met; and the vast amounts of traditional foods we were treated to.

We met with some enthusiastic youth who want to meet our youth on Facebook, and we listened to stories of racial prejudice present in Botswana’s society.  We heard of hopes and dreams for new ministries, a roof for one church, a well of clean water for another, an electronic key board for another. And we heard familiar stories of challenges faced by families, caring for the elderly, and how to give the youth a good foundation of faith. For example some parents lamented how sports activities are now held on Sunday mornings.

Our diocesan traveling committee meets Tuesday to begin planning how these and other stories and photos can be shared. I know we will be hosting some presentations here in the new year.

Finally, let me tell you about a few things you left in Botswana.

Post Botswana, after that pilgrimage, the world is still the same, the headlines are still the same. Financial crisis and great anxiety about the future. Yet this Advent I am blessed with the memory of smiles on the faces of those who do God’s work with what they have, hugs from orphans whose day is made by having some adult hold them and lift them high in the air, and the holiness of a people who were blessed to have Thomas the Apostle bring the faith to their continent.

In their midst of their AIDS crisis, with refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe crossing into their country, the Church in Botswana witnesses to us in the words of the prophet Isaiah, saying no matter what you are coping with, God’s blessedness is present:

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    "Here is your God!"

A holiday song says, “We need a little Christmas, right this very minute.”  We also need some Advent, a healthy dose of the prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist, and the assurance of the Son of God: do not be afraid. With God, nothing shall be impossible.

May God’s blessing from heaven, much pula, be upon the Church of Botswana, the Church in West Missouri, and all God’s people, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Waiting

by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon

Many of you have noticed that our mornings are a little darker these days and that the sun is going down earlier and earlier.  Soon, we will come to that time of year where many of us head out to work each day while it is still dark and return after nightfall longing for those warmer days of April and May that come in due time.  Even though we know this rhythm, the cadence of the year, we cannot help but be impatient for the return of those long days of summer with it warmth and comfort.  As a native San Diegian, anytime it drops into the 50s it's winter as far as I’m concerned.  It was always warm growing up with temperatures alternating between warm and warmer.  “Cool” weather, as I’ve suggested, was anything nearing the low 60s and was an occasion for many of us to break out the L.L. Bean sweaters that were pretty to look at but insufferable to wear much of the year.  The most ludicrous pieces of clothing were the down jackets popular in the '70s that, while fashionable, served little other purpose than to advertise your parents had nothing better to do with their money.  Here in the Midwest, down is practical and few of us would pass up the chance to wrap ourselves in a down comforter on the cold nights ahead.  Yes, you and I will wait for the sun’s return, and to its warmth we will bring our hopes, pale bodies, and tomato seedlings.  It will come, sooner or later.

In a time when most persons relied on their own ability to cultivate life from the soil as a means to live, this season was one of anxiety as well as anticipation for next year’s spring and its potential for renewal.  The Church has adopted this attitude of expectation in the season of Advent, as we reenact liturgically the coming of Christ.  More importantly, we are invited, much as we are in Lent, to reflect deeply on our relationship with God and our need for the gift that has come into the world and the promise the gift of Christ represents.  That will be a tough one this year for many because we have been doing a hard thing of late—we have been paying attention to the news.  The nation is in a recession, unemployment is the highest in 34 years, credit is tight, and many are struggling to keep their homes, pay their bills, and raise and educate their children.  There is fear and anxiety out there.  If that wasn’t enough, our city is finishing one of its more murderous years in terms of homicides while local elected officials distract themselves with petty complaints and self-indulgent pronouncements.

Abroad, we are a nation engaged in war in a world with many wars.  Our veterans are returning wounded in mind as well as body, and the challenge of returning to civilian life has proven difficult and maddening for thousands.  Preventable diseases bring much suffering to many, particularly in poorer, developing nations.  Civil unrest in Africa and the continued scourge of AIDS make living a hard thing for people not so different from you and me.  In other parts of the world, ethnic and racial divisions become the breading ground of genocide where neighbor becomes the scourge of neighbor.

And yet, in the midst of all this suffering and injustice, Holy Mother Church calls us to a time of expectation and hopeful waiting, relying upon God to redeem his people and save creation at a time when much appears to be going wrong. “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men?”  This isn’t the first thing we will see on the front page of the Star or our favorite Internet news source.  Instead, we find a world that appears broken and in defiance of how God has called us to live with one another.  At first glance it would appear that “comfort” is a long way off if it is to be had at all.

But to say this is to look with our eyes and not the eyes of God, to consider our brief time here as the measure of what is real, what is possible.  You and I are reminded to consider that God’s experience of time and our own is quite different.  For us, time is the steady drumbeat that takes us to our mortal end.  This life, a temporary intersection of intentions, matter, time, and space that no matter how dazzling and impressive is, quite simply, impermanent.  We are much like grass in this way.  God's time in not ours, we will disassemble in our death leaving our life in Christ as our only real home.

When we are mindful and attentive, you and I are aware that even as we see brutality we also bear witness to the fruit of justice that has ripened in our lifetimes while countless faithful persons before us waited in confidence that a day would come when people might govern themselves, or one’s character might be judged rather than one’s race or sex or sexual orientation.  The slaves of 200 years ago prayed for the end of their particular form of oppression but did not live to see that day.  God asks us to be faithful in waiting and trusting God to keep the promises God has made to humanity and to take the long-view of eternity.

It seems to me we have some other choices also, such as to the nature of our “waiting .”  We may make this a purely intellectual endeavor and reassure ourselves that God is in control and go about our merry way with no change in our perceptions or behaviors or we can be intentional participants in God’s work.  We must hope through action that proclaims God's love for each person.  Our faith in God’s providence should not be merely an idea but become incarnate in our response to the world as seen today.  We can be faithful, in part, by being faithful to what we believe is right as when we help build affordable housing at home or become a force for peace as former President Carter has done. When our responses to suffering take such forms, we participate intentionally and actively in the anticipation of Christ's coming.  When significant resources are made available to fight AIDS in Africa as has been championed by our president, again, our incarnate charity tells the world that God is coming, that God is here, now, and loves us.  In waiting for God’s work to be fulfilled, we must realize our part in this mystery.  We, like Christ, are vehicles for hope and renewal.  You have within you the capacity to be the presence of Christ on a planet in desperate need of the Gospel.  When by our actions we declare that against all apparent odds, justice can be triumphant, that love can conquer genocide, racism, and prejudice, you and I join with St. John in becoming a voice in the wilderness—and a voice to be reckoned with.