Psalm 42:5:b, 7-8, Luke 10: 25-37
When Sorrows Like Sea-Billows Roll
At the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s impact, a United Methodist Women member in Alabama West Florida conference told me, “Tears all over my face, I am watching the TV. Refugees are flooding into our area.”
Many of us could identify with her tears.
Only a few weeks ago, Mumbai, India, reeled in the monsoon rains. More than one thousand people died. I called my nephew in Mumbai to find out whether he was safe. Mumbai has no mechanism to safe-guard its sprawling population when the sea water joins hands in a treacherous dance with the monsoon waters.
When earthquakes conspired with a deadly tsunami last December, tens of thousands of lives were washed away on the shores of the Indian Ocean -- from Indonesia to Africa.
Now a deadly hurricane imposed its devastation on the everyday life of thousands of people in Louisianna, Mississippi, and Alabama. The rest of us watch and wait for the floods to recede.
Last week, United Methodist Women’s Division directors and staff had a powerful worship service in Stamford, Conn., where we all had brought a small rock, a handful of soil, and a container of water from our homes around the country. In one big worship fold, all the rocks, soil and water were gathered.
In this sacred space, there was one common soil that we could touch and feel. There was one gathered water pool that we could touch. There was one common air for our collective breathing. We created a sacred space by the mingling of varied soils and dsundry waters.
Like human grains, scattered and grown in various places, we celebrated our oneness and envisioned a common future together in this one place with One water, One baptism, One Lord and Savior.
This image is clouded by another one. Disastrous waves of water whipped relentlessly by a deadly hurricane.
Where is God when natural disaster hurts God’s children? Where is God when death and life fight the most naked of fist-fights in apocalyptic proportions? Where is God when we cannot forget the little faces of children, the anxious faces of the parents who carry them, and the clutching arms of children around the neck of the parents?
Under the inclement skies the memories are forever etched of images of
- God’s people huddling together or wading through waters,
- those of the sick ones put in big plastic containers or on floating mattresses, and
- those pulled from danger by loved ones.
No one knows how many are sealed in watery graves inside their homes or submerged under massive architectures. This we know. God’s uprooted people are on a long journey on foot, by bus, on air, seeking a higher ground. Trapped on roof tops and balconies, some continue to wave for help.
The Church As A Make-Shift Boat
The church was imagined as a boat in the medieval times. The same image has been used by the ecumenical community for years now: the church as a boat journeying on the waters. It often journeys on turbulent waters.
On the T.V., too, we see make-shift boats being made on the disastrous flood waters of New Orleans, and pressed into saving people.
The church “happens” there right before our eyes. The church happens when people risk their lives to save others. The church happens when two or three persons gather together, make a boat out of containers or mattresses, place the weaker ones in these make-shift boats, and wade through the waters, in search of a safer ground.
The church wades through waters. God is “in the midst of it,” as a close friend of mine would say. With God, God’s uprooted people are wading through the waters.
Responding To Interruption
Responding to calamitous interruptions are, at times such as these, acts of neighborliness. The recent tragedies such as hurricane, landslides, and tsunami call us to live out of our depths of being. As a faith community, we are physically and metaphorically thrown into such watery neighborhoods here and far.
The story of the Good Samaritan is a story of interruption. Those who cannot stop, listen, and respond to a victim of a wayside terror are condemned in this story. Jesus commends the one who is willing to be interrupted, and who responds generously to the wayside as a Good Neighbor.
Mission is scratching where it itches. The true church is where life and death intersect in one’s daily life. The real church is often where death and disaster seemingly take over and seem to have a final say. But the Good Samaritans seek to put out health kits of survival, arrange for transportation, and provide funding for complete recovery of the victim of terror (Luke 10: 34).
Contexts have changed. The needs are the same in mission. Health kits, transportation, and funding for wholeness and healing. As good neighbors, let us stop our work or vacation and respond generously to the victims of eco-terror.
Bursting Into A Night Song
In the meantime, let us, as God’s people, burst into a night song. Read Psalm 42: 7-8. The Psalmist tells us about a song which God gives to those who put their trust in God. Yesterday, I came across the following passage which reminds me of the type of songs that God gives to God’s children:
We have hope-not because things are getting better and better, but because we know that the Spirit is at work in our midst.
God has not left us alone. God is with us in the midst of our struggles,in the midst of our longings, in the midst of our faith, and in the midst of our doubts. And as long as God is in our midst, we can hope.
God is right in the midst of the people impacted by the tragedy of eco-terror in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
“God-in-the-midst-of-it” is our night song. That song is with us. It is a God-given song to the faith community in its unspeakable, excruciating pain.
Psalm 42:8: Let us break forth into the night song, God-in-the-midst-of-it-all.
As we give generously, as we make health kits, and as we pray in solidarity with those affected by the hurricane and floods, we continue to sing God’s song which is with us and entrusted to us.
God in the midst of it all!
* Glory E. Dharmaraj is Executive Secretary for Justice Education for the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries.
