Let It Be, Kathy Hykes, Advent III--Year C--December 11, 2005

Gospel of John 1:6-8. 19-28 and Acts 7:55-60

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight,
O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

“There was a man sent from God, whose Name was John.” “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” the Gospel writer has John the Baptist say, quoting the prophet Isaiah. I have heard different descriptions of the wilderness from the pulpit through the years. Today I want to describe another one for you.

For those of you who may not know, eleven members of this congregation went out to El Salvador at the end of October of this year. I was one of them. This might be the headline in Comfortable Words in January when I write reflections on my experience there:

Holy Comforter Parishioner Works Chain Gang in Central America

This title is tongue in cheek of course, and I will explain it more later. Many of you have asked me about the trip, saying you heard it was hard. Compared to rearing a child or hearing a parent cry out in great pain, compared to a terrible boss, or to having a discussion with your spouse or your teenager that turns into an argument, compared to losing your health, to losing a friend? No, this trip was not hard. Compared to my cushy life with police protection, trash collection, hot running water, light housework, a pretty house, a pretty church, a pretty city? Yes, this trip was hard.

We read this morning a small part of the letter Paul wrote from Athens to the congregation at Thessalonika. The full epistle is a letter of hope and a prescription for personal discipline. What we heard today in this short excerpt is Paul’s advice for their spiritual life. He wrote to keep their faith alive and their spirits up because he had heard that they were having trouble.

The people of El Salvador are having trouble. Many of the words of the Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah recall El Salvador for me. I wished for the joy of the psalmist when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion as I read the psalm. Never have I seen a country that so needed a Savior, as the country ironically named El Salvador, which means the savior in Spanish.

El Salvador is on the west coast of Central America bordered by Guatemala on the north and Honduras on the East. It is a beautiful country with beaches of black sand banded by coconut palms that rustle in the breeze, high mountains covered in coffee bushes, and brilliant bougainvillea cascades improbably over some of the most dilapidated dwellings you can possibly imagine. Though the mountains are lovely some of them are active volcanoes. It is a land susceptible to earthquakes. In 2001, 335,000 houses were lost in earthquakes. This is a country where more than 40% of the population lives in poverty, making $1 or $2 a day. Most tragic of all, the people live in fear and insecurity. Each year over 6000 lives are lost to armed violence. The State of North Carolina, with a greater area and population had about 500 murders in the same time period.

We volunteered in El Salvador under the auspices of Episcopal Relief and Development (what used to be known as the Presiding Bishop’s Fund in case you wondered whatever happened to that organization.) and the Anglican/Episcopal Diocese of El Salvador. Though Episcopal Relief and Development sends funds and consultants to non-government organizations in disaster areas all over the world, El Salvador is the only country where there is an on-going program to rebuild the housing, revitalize the agricultural sector, provide mental health services, and initiate micro-credit programs.

I don’t know how familiar you are with a mattock. I became very familiar with one on this trip, in addition to a short shovel and wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow filled with dirt. Our group was assigned to dig two foundations and remove the dirt for the 420 square foot houses being built at the El Maizal site, in Western El Salvador. After four hours of back breaking work in 88 degree heat covered from head to toe to prevent sunburn I was not sure I was going to survive. Mind you others in our group used their free time in the afternoon to cut the grass, using machetes, while I was only capable of taking their pictures and napping. But with some wholesome food and much laughter about how ill equipped we were for being a ditch diggers I felt better. And at Daily Compline we learned a new prayer for evening: “What is done is done, What is not done is not done. Let it Be. We all found solace in those words.”[1]

My heart sank when the roosters crowed the next morning. It was walking to the work site the second day that made me think of the chain gang. It seemed like a death march. At six am the sun was high and the dirt was still there. It was certainly not a chain gang in the literal sense, since I volunteered to be there (I kept muttering this reality to myself) but I knew I was chained by peer pressure, by my own expectations, by our host organization’s agenda, and by the volunteers and beneficiaries who would know what we accomplished there. I could not cut and run. I knew I had to do it, but I was not sure how I could.

Ditch digging was never on my list of desired vocations. I learned some very valuable lessons doing it though and a new respect for manual laborers. Some members of our group met this challenge with great enthusiasm. Others were terrific at organizing the work. No one complained. I learned why ditch diggers rest on their shovels while others work. It is because you can do it longer and better if you pace yourself. I am going to use this new knowledge as my body continues its rebellion through the coming years.

But the work was almost beside the point and I believe that was a part of the design. The teamwork of the group, the morning walk through fields of bellflowers to get to the site, the thrill when the allotted time for work was finished, the pride in discovering that a 58 year old body could do back breaking work and recover to work another day—these experiences, though confronting, were also beside the point. What was the point was what we learned from a young woman called coincidentally, Caroline or in Spanish, Carolina.
Picture this scene: A group of church volunteers tired from a long day of visiting work sites and other points of interest, is asked to attend a service of Eucharist. The celebrant is a priest from the community they have traveled with all day. The group arrives at the church an hour and a half later than they are expected. They do not know what to expect, if there will be anyone except them at the service. As their van pulls into the empty fenced church yard, it is suddenly surrounded by teenage girls with bright, eager faces greeting them like long lost friends.

The church of St. Peter and St. Paul is a cinder block structure with two bare hanging light bulbs and two candles on the altar, the only illumination in the fading light of evening. As the service begins, the guests work hard to translate the Spanish words into their own familiar liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer. There is no instrument to lead the singing and they know none of the songs, yet they try to follow the young woman who sings with the most gusto—her enthusiasm is much better than her musicality. But for the welcome of the priest for his guests, the service is not much different from a service back home. When the service ends the entire congregation introduces themselves, the young people and the guests. Many of the guests turn then to leave. They are hungry, grimy, and tired and one of the group is hurt from a fall during the day. The guide calls out and asks them to remain for a moment. She is surrounded by the young women, some still young girls. The young men and boys hang back. One of the young people has something to say. The teenager called Carolina rises. With an urgency no one could discount or harden their heart to, she begged for help for the little church and its school, for books, tuition, for uniforms for at least some of the young people there in the dingy church. She pleaded for help to send them to school. She told through the translator of the hopelessness of her situation. In tears she begged for help for all of the young people there in that dimly lit church. Their needs were meager. They wanted to go to school so that life could be better.

I know I left that church with a lump in my throat and a weight on my heart. It was even harder on my husband Bob. He likes to solve problems, not just hear about them. His first question when we returned was, How can we adopt her?

What is mission work? Paul went out to bring the message of Jesus. John the Baptist went out to testify to the light. It was not our mission on this trip to preach-- the classic picture of the missionary. It turns out it was more our mission to do whatever work there was to do and to simply listen.

On our final night, after Daily Compline, we did a reflection on our experience. One of the priests assigned to El Salvador by the Episcopal Church, listened silently to our responses until one person said they were not sure they should have been one of the ones to come, expressing the helplessness many of us felt for the great needs of so many and our inability to meet them, the regret that we should have been younger, or more skilled in Spanish. At this point Pastor John spoke up. He said whether you feel like you should be here or not, you were the one God sent. You were the one God Sent.

Carolina is the voice of El Salvador, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. We were ‘not the light’, but we ‘came to testify to the light’. Our mission was to go bring ‘good news to the oppressed’. All we could offer was whatever dollars were left in our wallets for a few scholarships and let our physical presence speak the message that we care what happens to them. This can never be enough any more than moving some dirt will be enough to build the new village. But it brings hope to people almost too numb to react, it brings faith in our ritual breaking bread together, and it brings love in the form of a handshake and a gentle patting on the back.

This has been a year of great calamity. We had no way of knowing when this trip was planned how much need there would turn out to be all over the world. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, war, famine, and disease have come into our living rooms with stunning ferocity this year. How inadequate we all feel to the task of healing this broken and suffering world! I doubt there is one of us here today who has not done something to help, in whatever way we could, no matter how small. It could individually overwhelm us, unless we keep remembering that we are, all of us, the ones that God sent. Paul in his letter today advises us to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

“What has been done has been done, What has not been done has not been done, Let it be.”

While we are waiting this Advent season for the light to come into the world, we are called to bring what we can, whatever it is that we can offer, and then let it be.

Amen


1] From the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer.