March 17, 2013 – Guest preacher Kelly Speak
“A New Way – of Abundant Grace & Mercy”
March 17, 2013 @ First Lutheran
Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who was and who is to come. Amen.
There is a lot going on in the readings today. In Isaiah, God’s people are living divided, part of them off in exile and part living under Babylonian rule, but both groups suffering to varying degrees. This text is working to point to their history with God and to give encouragement to not lose heart in this seemingly hopeless setting. And in Philippians we hear from the ever passionate Paul, who once claimed success at spending his time and resources pursuing and persecuting Christians, but now lets go of all of that to spend his time and resources pursuing reliance upon and relationship with Christ. And then the gospel, my my the gospel! What is Mary thinking! Using one year’s worth of wages on perfume for someone’s feet! And Judas, twisting Jesus’ own teachings to suit himself.
I wish I was here just to talk about those stories. But I’m here to talk about the story of our partnership with the church in Cameroon. Then again, maybe it’s all related…we’ll have to see.
As a part of our Companion Synod Partnership, Lisa Janke and I spent 4 months in Cameroon at this time last year. Cameroon is a place, like in the Isaiah reading today, that has a way of feeling hopeless the further you look into it; a place where a person’s power and value are routinely threatened and disregarded. As a result the people of Cameroon struggle with violence and addiction, competition and tribalism, and corruption at every level; and it’s the women and children that often bear the brunt of these struggles. We were there specifically to work with women and girls, in order to develop leadership and to share a violence prevention program called SafeTeen. This is some of what we encountered.
We spent our first 2.5 months listening and taking part in the story of Cameroon before we began to teach what we had come to share. We attended women’s and girl’s groups, we visited women in their homes and at their offices, and we opened the door of our home to hear the stories of different girls that we met along the way. The stories were of fear and violence, of fault and blame. They had questions within them and assumptions and explanations of God’s unhappiness with the storytellers, to justify the power exerted over them, to make sense of their suffering. We learned about laws around sexual assault, then we learned the realities of sexual assault and what it means to be a 10-year-old girl in a small community in Cameroon. And a 20-year-old girl. And a 40-year-old woman. And on, and on. While we were there, each day was too difficult. Each day was stained with feeling too small to make even a dent in this big ugliness.
As we listened to their stories to learn as much as we could of the context for women and girls, we discovered that in being present, in asking and in opening our door, we could carry that story for a brief moment for each of the tellers.
Often, to serve another starts with opening up in order to be vulnerable enough to connect honestly with one another. To hear someone’s story restores the dignity that comes with not being invisible anymore. Hearing about someone’s life or experience helps us to understand each other’s needs. When we listened to the stories of the girls and women in Cameroon, it was often the first time the experience had ever been spoken out loud to another person. It was the first time that someone had listened to them and acknowledged their experience as real and important. And as we listened, we hurt with them. We were angry for them and it was all real, so painfully and vividly real.
While the details of each story may have been different, they are all one common narrative, one shared experience of a gendered prison within their own communities and their own homes: Not having any money to get home and taking a ride from a passing vehicle, knowing its not going to end well for them and having no other option; hearing that some women like it when their husbands beat them because that’s the only way to know they are cared for; male neighbours or family members saying “if not you, then it will be your little sister”. Hearing those words, well I have a sister, a little sister. Some of you have met her. In the midst of everything seeming so hopeless, that story, that day was one of the moments when things shifted. We were so submerged in the story of others that the lines were blurred. I no longer knew where their story ended and ours began. I was surrounded by pain and suffering and abandonment and invisibility and it made me so…so…ready. My fear of not making a difference, of going there in vain was gone. My fears around being rich and white and awful were gone. My fear of knowing nothing and having nothing to offer and being in way way over my head were silenced and I was simply ready. Ready to say, assured and certain, that no one is created to receive violence. We are each and every one of us created to receive love. Despite every other message that says this is not true, we are rooted in a faith that claims us as God’s own beloved, of such great value to God that we are worth everything.
We continued listening to stories until the day we left. Did you know your heart can break open wider still, always? Making more room for others. Making room for God’s peace to get in, here and now.
Even in feeling things shift, I do not know how we slept each night and rose each morning to do it all over again. There are of course a few explanations, one being that we had a calendar, a schedule; and so each day we looked at the calendar and at our growing list of tasks and tried to do what it said. I don’t doubt for a second that God gives us what we need to carry out God’s work, and one thing both Lisa and I needed was a calendar; we are list making, schedule filling, task accomplishing kind of people after all. But that certainly wasn’t entirely it. While Lisa and I are proud of what was accomplished, we remember that it was not by our own will, no, we often wanted to quit and several times a week we did. People who knew us or knew of us, people like you, together in a community of faith, were praying to a God who always seeks peace, who always builds up love and who always risks it all for our sake. We knew this was happening because people told us so, that they were praying for us, but we also knew because, well we felt it – sometimes even feeling the physical sensation of being surrounded. We felt God with us, we felt you with us. If we tried to add it up, it seemed impossible that we would sit and listen to story after story, day after day, of the world’s most awful stuff and be able to envision a different way. It seems unlikely at best that we would have been able to translate a 27-page program manual from English to French, neither of us really speaking French. And it seemed completely unrealistic that 15 women were able to leave all of the daily responsibilities that women in Cameroon have, for 4 days of training meant to confront the power exerted over them by others. I remember these things happening, I can recall each of the steps taken to get to the end, but mostly I still look back with amazement at the impossibility of it all, and at the path that was made for us. I think this is what it means to look for what God is up to here and now. I think this is an example of what it means when we hear, in both the first and second reading today, to forget what has passed and look for God’s new way. When we merely talk of God’s continuous outpouring of love, but don’t actually EXPECT to see it, we sell our selves and our God short. Stories of healings and other miracles, stories like Lazarus being raised from the dead – and he really was very dead, and now is alive today in the gospel sitting at the dinner table with his family and friends – these stories can teach us that when we look for God, we will see that a new way is possible. Everything is possible. Even the impossible situation of culturally normalized violence in Cameroon. Even the impossibility of taking on the world’s brokenness, only to come out healed and whole instead of dead. This is after all what Jesus promises. This is after all what we are asked to do.
Are we willing to admit that we are often more like Judas in today’s gospel story, making “holy excuses” for not joining in what God is doing here and now? After all, Judas always had the resources to help the poor whenever he wished – but we don’t hear that he ever did. By contrast we see Mary get “caught up” in the mystery and magnitude of Jesus, God’s new way, as she sees and gives what is needed. Sometimes we are like Mary too though; recognizing God’s work of love and giving all we can to it.
After we held a training event for the newly adapted SafeTeen Cameroon program, 5 women came forward to say that they wanted to be full program facilitators. We spent our last month working with them to memorize and practice the material and coached them through their first workshops with teenage girls. The program teaches skills for getting out of dangerous situations without escalating or using violence. It addresses violence between peers, coercion and relationship violence, and situations of unequal power like with teachers or elders. As we watched the first official SafeTeen Cameroon workshops being run, we saw cracks in the walls holding these girls captive; we saw glimmers of light breaking through the dark places the girls inhabit. We watched young Cameroonian women tell younger Cameroonian girls that they had value and worth and that no matter what they were told in their families, in their schools, in their communities, they were not created to receive violence. We watched young Cameroonian women validate and honour the voices of younger Cameroonian girls, and we watched those girls use their voices to begin to name their experience and claim their status as beloved. And we knew that God was there.
As we come to Easter, we will hear again that in the midst of death, there is life. In the midst of despair, there is hope. That we can look for and EXPECT to see God at work, here and now, continuously making a new thing, a new way.
May we open our hands and our hearts wide, and envision this new way with and for all who are in need. Amen.
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