The Reverend Kirk T. Berlenbach

Epiphany III, Year C

January 17^th, 2010

The sermon I am about to preach came extremely close to never getting written. I like to start writing my sermons on Tuesday and, true to form I had done just that. But then the news about the terrible earthquake in Haiti began to trickle in and soon that news became not just a flow but a torrent of images and pleas for help. But even though I understood that this is exactly the sort of event that demands a response from the pulpit, I did not scrap the sermon I had started and start a new one. Instead I did my best to avoid the issue.

By Wednesday morning I knew that preaching on Haiti was the right thing to do. But I also knew that writing such a sermon would take a great deal of effort. And so I did what so many of us do when faced by a difficult and unpleasant task…. I kept avoiding it. Moreover, instead of putting my energy into the task at hand, I worked really hard at finding reasons to justify my procrastination. Truth be told it was so much easier to stick with the sermon I had. To start with the other sermon (on the subject of spiritual gifts and the ministry of all believers) was already 90% finished. And this week more than ever, time was a precious commodity. First my mother-in-law moved down to Philadelphia from her home in Albany. Second, only a day after the move, my mother had abdominal surgery. And finally, a foam rubber insulation ring in the rectory’s heating system chose this week to come unglued and fall onto the heating elements, filling the house with the noxious odor of burning plastic and forcing us to open all the downstairs windows thus turning the house into an icebox.

Not surprisingly, all this stress left me wiped out and frankly the idea of starting a new sermon from scratch, especially when a perfectly good one was already at my disposal, just wasn’t very appealing. But then I got to the last and greatest reason why I did not want to write this sermon; preaching about the disaster in Haiti was an incredibly uncomfortable thing to preach about. What does one say about a disaster so massive that it leaves 50,000 to 100,000 people dead? How does one begin to make theological sense of the fact that it also happened in a country that is little better than a disaster zone at the best of times? What could I say that that was not either shallow or grossly overused?

By the time Thursday afternoon rolled around I thought I had finally made up my mind. Naturally I did not plan to avoid the situation altogether. Haiti would be addressed in the Prayers of the People and even in the announcements after services but I was going to stick with the sermon I had already written. Naturally it was then, right after I had convinced myself of this course of action, that G-D smacked me upside the head and showed me something startling; what I was wrestling with in terms of my preaching this week perfectly mirrored what many of us were already feeling about the earthquake. This disaster is so overwhelming, so uncomfortable, so horrific, that the easiest thing to do is avoid it.

But that is exactly what we cannot allow ourselves to do. To shut our eyes to the scenes of suffering and close our ears to the cries of the wounded, the grieving and the hungry runs contrary to the very essence of our faith and our common humanity. It is precisely in times like these that we must remember that part of being a Christian means that we can’t look away. We can’t turn our backs on suffering, no matter how much discomfort witnessing it may cause us. In order to fully discern how we should respond we must revisit the grim realities of life in Haiti once again.

And it is a grim picture indeed. Although reports are still pouring in, what we already know simply staggers the imagination. The International Red Cross estimates that one-third of Haitians -- about 3 million people -- were affected by the earthquake. Death estimates range from 50,000 to over 100,000. But simple numbers are too easy to detach from. We need images to make it real. In a heart-rending story, the The New York Times reported on the scene in Port-au-Prince: “Tuesday's quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings -- hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace -- the rubble sending up a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital. On Wednesday, ambulances weaved in and out of crowds, swerving to miss the bodies lying in street and the men on foot who lugged stretchers bearing some of the injured. Shocked survivors wandered about in a daze, some wailing the names of loved ones, praying or calling for help. Others with injuries fast growing into infections sat by the roadside, waiting for doctors who were not sure to come. Search-and-rescue helicopters buzzed over the bodies of partially clothed victims who lay face-down in mounds of rubble and twisted steel. Everywhere, there was panic, urgency, pleas for help. 'Thousands of people poured out into the streets, crying, carrying bloody bodies, looking for anyone who could help them…’”

What can one say to that? What can we, either as individuals or as a community, possibly do that will constitute a meaningful response? Well obviously we can give money. But money, even the most generous gift, is not enough. Truth be told we could sell St. Timothy’s and empty our bank accounts and send all the money to Haiti and it would only make the smallest of dents in the suffering and the tragedy that exists there. The needs created by the earthquake are so massive and overwhelming that they leave us feeling helpless… the knowledge that even if we gave all we had it wouldn’t change much can paralyze our response. But even if it makes only the tiniest difference in only one life, we still have to act. Just as our faith does not permit us to look away, it also does not permit us to stand idly by and do nothing.

There will always be a reason why we can justify disengaging from horrors like the one in Haiti. And often it is a good reason. Our time is stretched, our emotions and our energy our limited, our money is tight…. But as valid as our limitations may be, they still do not give us permission to look away. We still have to engage, even if it is the last thing we want to do. We have to allow ourselves to feel it even if that means we feel anger or that we shed tears, even if it means questioning G-D and wrestling with our faith, we cannot look away. That is what it means to be Christian in a world where such things happen all the time… we have to have the courage and the intellectual honesty to look into the eyes of the suffering and to stare into the face of horror and then to do the best we can in response… even if we already know that our best will make little difference we still must act. To do otherwise is to let our hearts grow cold… to silence our consciences… to numb our compassion and to deaden our faith.

So how do we respond? There are a myriad of ways. We can give money. And at the moment that may be the single most important thing we can do. In your leaflet you will find an insert from Episcopal Relief and Development. They are but one of many charities that will help make sure your donation gets to the people who need it most. But a donation, although it may be the most important thing we can do, is not enough.

We must also offer our prayers. Prayer not only supports those we pray for, it also helps to keep us engaged with the problem and only by bringing the matter before G-D can we ever hope to achieve any sort of peace with it. But perhaps most importantly we can make sure that we do not let the plight of Haiti, or any of the dozens of others severely impoverished and ruined nations in our world, fade from our awareness. We cannot just make a gesture of response and then forget. Making a donation or offering a prayer should be but the beginning of our response, not the end. We are Christians and that means that in this world we are the Body of Christ. We cannot look away. We have to act. We must act as his hands to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, soothe the suffering, bury the dead, console the grieving, confront injustice and expose corruption. As individual members of the Body of Christ we must keep the people of Haiti in our thoughts and prayers and do whatever we can to aid them, not just for today or for next week or next month or even next year, but until the job is done. Only then... only then will we have done our part to make sure that this disaster leads not just to return to the slightly less awful conditions that existed in Haiti before the quake, but to more permanent and sweeping change... change that rebuilds this desperately poor nation and results in a lasting improvement in the lives of the millions who live there. Only then will we have done our job. Only then will we have lived out our faith. Only then we will have truly acted as the Body of Christ in this broken world. AMEN