I remember the joke, when I was younger, “what is the most dangerous stunt Evil Knievel could ever do?” The answer was “ride his motorcycle through Ethiopia with a ham sandwich tied on his back”. Ethiopia was so far away, and the word was used when I didn’t want to eat my dinner: people in Ethiopia are starving. So send the food to them. It makes perfect sense.
A sense of humor helps with life, I think jokes are a healthy way to face reality. The problem is reality is still there when the humor wears off. People are still suffering when we run out of jokes. I use humor like a life raft, I don’t know how to face reality. I like to feel like I am in control, and start to joke when I am not.
We arrive at our food outreach, I look around for Eric Cartman (from South Park). I wonder where Sally Strothers is. I want to change the channel.
It is so easy to change the channel. The commercials for World Vision or United Way, just a dollar a day…. What’s on ESPN?
The truth is, today I saw that the Red Sox are 11.5 games in first place. Boston must be buzzing. Even better, the Yankees are 13 games back. (I’m not sure what I would rather watch, the Red Sox win or the Yankees lose.) I kind of wish I was home to pay attention to sports radio right now. But I committed to this, I can’t change the channel.
We rode out to the refugee camp stuffed in the back of the flat bed, with 50 bags of ‘pop’. Pop is some kind of corn starch/farina/grits stuff, each bag weighing 50 kg. This much food will keep a camp of 2500 people alive for 3 weeks. We are stuffed in the truck, maybe thirty of us. We arrive in the camp and are quickly surrounded by hundreds of starving people.
I hold my water bottle, like a baby’s binkie, security. I see women with tribal scarring. I feel weird about all the bare breasts. I feel even more weird about being so heavy. I eat more in a day than how many of them? I don’t know the stats. My dog eats more….
I sit here now, in a nice hotel room, celebrating our anniversary, drinking a glass of wine (because the beer is less than quality, and besides, I am trying to develop a taste for wine, WWJD, you know? Beer is such a blue collar taste, and I am pretty sure my Lord was a white collar, Republican, warmonger….sorry, I digress). I think about the people, I wonder what I am doing. Does any of this matter in the long run? What do I believe?
Do I believe I am an ambassador? Representing Jesus? Just a weird thing to happen in these kids lives? I am surrounded by children, kids staring at me, an overfed white guy with a goofy goatee thing going. I make my best funny faces, I shake hands. I do my best fancy handshakes and high fives, and I feel helpless.
The Arco Iris guys set up a sound system, play music, dance and sing. For at least an hour. Praising God? People are starving! People who did not choose where to be born. Generations of people, a culture of suffering.
I woke up feeling like I was going to preach. Be ready in season and out of season, be ready to share the joy inside me. What friggin joy? These starving people have more joy than I do eating a T bone! If I were to preach today, what would I talk about?
Jesus is the bread of life. John 6. How’s that? You’re starving, but Jesus is the bread of life, coming from an overweight american. Yeah good thinking. What about the Lord’s prayer? In Matthew 6? Or the beatitudes? Blessed are the poor in spirit…what does that mean? We in this country have no clue. Really, we have no idea.
I read in Shane Claiborne’s book a quote from an early church father that said for a christian to eat a meal while a child starves to death is murder. How does that sit in your conscience?
I shook hands with people, I saw the disease in the eyes, the skin. The bloated stomachs of children (I don’t understand the physiology of these skinny kids with big bellies. They are really heavy, and smell funny, have no emotions, when I pick them up and hug them or tickle them, they really don’t react, and feel like they swallowed a bowling ball. their bellies are hard and heavy).
How do I connect here. What does God want to say to these people? How does a God that my theology says is all loving, how does he allow this? How is this my family? Why is life so weird? Does anything I do today matter? Is there anything I can say that matters? What do I believe?
Then the mic was put in my hand. Mulungu gua mpowmf. Amen? Mulungu muadidi. Amen? Mulungu asak funa. Amen? And the crowd would respond with an amen each time. How can these people believe God is powerful, God is good, that God loves them? I ask them if they really believe this, or are they just saying amen because that is what you say when someone says amen. They respond in the positive, they really believe this.
I ask them if they know who this God is. Really believe in these stories of Jesus, that to me often just seem like stories. How can people with so little, people with so much pain and suffering know this Jesus. This Jesus has to be a different person than my western religion teaches.
I explained the Jesus I believe in, the Jesus I don’t understand. A God that walked the earth, was crucified, rose again, ascended to heaven. This God who is returning, who is building a kingdom. I explained that I don’t understand all this. That we are family, that we might never see each other again, but I believe we have a common destiny. We are all destined to stand before his throne, to give an account of our lives. That Jesus has a feast planned for us, forever, together. I believe the alternative is hell. We have been given a choice. I ask the people who want this future to come forward, no one moves. I speak a little more. I again ask people to come forward, and again no one moves. OK, a show of hands. Hands go up everywhere, it seemed like everyone wanted this. Then I think, maybe I sold this too hard, so I explain what living for Jesus means to me, what happens when we make this decision. It is not easy, because Jesus loves us just the way we are, but he refuses to leave us that way, and our lives will never be the same as God begins shaping us for his kingdom. Everyone still wants in. So we pray…
As we do this day after day, I struggle with what we are actually doing in people’s lives, do I really believe everything that I just preached. I hope so. I hope this is effecting lives positively, changing destinies. Because with the pain and the suffering we see each day, it would be really easy to just give up.
I believe this adventure is really changing me, also. More and more I realize the need for people to pursue more of God, not to just send money. Not to change the channel. Come see this suffering, smell the children’s rotting teeth. Smell the infection coming out of the pores of these innocents.
It is heartbreaking.
