Suffering, Sobbing and Song
A Homily deliverd in Simpson Memorial Chapel April 12, 2006
Ethiopia is a dry, dry land. It is fall in February, and most of the terrain is colored a pale brown. Any harvest that might have been is gone. Every now and then we spot a patch of green, but it is fleeting. Hunger is rampant, and its smell is in the air. Ethiopia ranks seventh from the bottom on the United Nations poverty scale. It’s an agricultural society with 80% unemployment. Clean water is lacking. Education is for those who can pay. Adequate health care is a figment of the imagination.
The look on young girls’ faces in the crime-ridden Merkato area of Addis Ababa haunts those of us who are visitors from a foreign land. We ask them about their dreams. We ask them what they wanted to be. We ask them what they fear most, and their answers remain: rape or abduction. Half of girls under age 15 are married, many to older men who bring them diseases unaware - innocent victims of ignorance and culture with their futures being determined for them before the age of 6.
I became sick and was taken to a community clinic to experience the minimal provision of service given to the many on death’s door. Those who live past age 48 are considered lucky. I am white in a black land. I am privileged and taken to the front of the line. I am weak and guilt-ridden. My mouth is parched. I ask for water and there is none. I use the bathroom which is a hole in the floor in an unlit 2×2 enclosed, putrid space. “My God!” I say.
Some say suffering makes us stronger. Some say we must suffer if we are to find true joy. Some say suffering is the real “stuff of life.”
Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”
The church is present in Ethiopia. The Orthodox Church claims over half the population as members. The complicity of religion in the suffering of the masses is apparent when we hear the archbishop emphatically denounce the use of condoms even if a married woman needs to use them to protect herself from her AIDS-infected husband. It’s her fault for marrying such a person who violates the religious law. Her life is inconsequential. She might as well be nailed to a cross just like Jesus.
The Psalmist says: “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping, my eyes waste away because of grief.” “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?” Where is this suffering Jesus, Son of God? Our hearts are broken when we hear such tales of woe and, if we cared, righteous anger overcomes our very being. Is Jesus in the midst of this, as some would say? Or are these people of Ethiopia and millions of others who are poor simply pawns on a planet gone mad? Where is this Jesus?
My sobbing began when I arrived home. My tears put me face to face with those who seem so poor. I wonder about their fate. I think about the young girls subjected to cruelty with very little recourse. I think about the women waiting outside the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital suffering perferoated bladders and/or rectums due to obstructed births. With no access to cesarean sections, these women have no control over their bodily functions. They leak urine constantly and are cast out of their villages. Two million women suffer from this affliction. The suicide rate is high.
The plight of the girl child is alarming. By the age of two, girl children are carrying heavy loads on their heads – water, wood, anything! These weight bearing objects begin to take their toll, and their little bodies become stunted. Their skeletal system is compacted including their pelvic area; thus, resulting in difficult, if not deadly, births. To complicate matters, many are sexually active before their menstrual cycles commence. Out of a population of 77 million people, Ethiopia has only 104 ob/gyns – as many as Washington, DC alone. And, the obstetricians who continue to practice witness 2-3 deaths per day or find themselves acquiring AIDS from delivering babies from AIDS infected moms and having no access to any protective gear.
The gospel says that Jesus wept. Did he weep because he was scared? Or did he weep because he truly realized the meaning and compassion of the word “suffer” and the awesomeness of being human? Some say that Christ was crucified to pay for our sins. I’m not so sure about that. What resonates with me is this suffering Jesus. His claiming his humanity, by loving with abandon, and thereby, catapulting him into pain and grief. And, how often we find ourselves forgetting that Jesus walks with us in all the valleys? How often we neglect to claim him as “best friend”. But, far too often we place him on a pedestal and forget his solidarity with us completely.
Clarence Jordan, one of the founders of Koinonia and author of The Cotton Patch Bible wrote: “Jesus has been so zealously worshipped, his deity so vehemently affirmed, his halo so brightly illumined, and his cross so beautifully polished, that in the minds of many he no longer exists as a man. He has become an exquisite celestial being who momentarily lapsed into a painful involvement in the human scene, and then quite properly returned to his heavenly habitat. By thus glorifying him, we more effectively rid ourselves of him than did those who tried to do so by crudely crucifying him.”
Well, it seems to me that the girls in the Amhara Region, the most destitute area of Ethiopia, know about this suffering Jesus. Many seem to have a vitality of hope dwelling within that’s indescribable. They proclaim the good news about their new life through a program offering education and life skills. In fact, one announces that she wished she had electricity so she could read all night! Another reports walking for an hour to reach the project with the desire to become a nurse. In their poverty, they seem happy – hopeful, and they sing for us. I see Jesus in their faces. I hear Jesus through their singing. I feel that these young innocent girls are, indeed, the Easter people, and I claim them as sacred. They minister to me as if they know my soul needs reviving. How do they know? Do they realize that I carry their witness with me and call upon it daily? The resurrection story is manifested through their acts of love and kindness to strangers they had never met. The resurrection story comes alive when a smile is given and a hand grips mine. The resurrection story is present because they remind me that those of us who are wealthy have much to learn about humility and sacrifice.
This holy week gives us all an opportunity to reassess our lives and to re-claim our faith. We do have a loving God. The most spiritual among us is not exempt from the darkness yet we know that Jesus will not abandon us and walks with us in our journey. Jesus knows what it means to suffer and yet brings joy in the morning.
As Brian Wren wrote in 1978: “This is a day of new beginnings, time to remember and move on, time to believe what love is bringing, laying to rest the pain that’s gone. For by the life and death of Jesus, God’s mighty Spirit, now as then, can make for us a world of difference, as faith and hope are born again. Christ is alive, and goes before us to show and share what love can do. This is a day of new beginnings; our God is making all things new…Our God is making all things new.” Alleluia! Date: 4/12/2006
