Puentes de Christo
Ephesians 2:11-22
Bienvenidos y Dios bendiga en el nombre del senor Jesuchristo! Welcome and God bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today is mission Sunday; with 26 of us having returned from our mission trip to Nicaragua, we hope to tell the story of our mission experience.
“What
are you going to do?” That was the
question so many folks asked before we left on our trip to Nicaragua. Since returning, the questions has changed
to “What did you do?” I understand that
folks are legitimately curious about how we spent our time, what benefit we
added to the kingdom of God, why we gave so much time and treasure in traveling
to a foreign land. What are you going
to do? What did you do? These are the questions almost everyone has
asked, but they are the wrong questions.
*****
The
most obvious thing that one notices when traveling throughout Nicaragua is the
breadth of the poverty. Ninety percent
of the population lives in poverty; sixty percent live in destitute poverty. It was not uncommon in the countryside to
see a mud and stick home with a dirt floor house a family of six or seven. The homes actually come in four categories:
the basic floor plan is 300 – 400 square feet with corrugated metal roofs. The “starter home” is the above mentioned
mud and stick variety with the dirt floor and metal roof, although some
starters have heavy sheet plastic for their roofing. The typical “family home” is the same floor plan using brick or
cinder blocks with a concrete floor. The
upper middle class will use these same materials but add one, two or three
rooms. Finally, the rich have homes
that look an awful lot like ours, complete with electricity and running water.
When
we were in the countryside, my group (Rene and the youth were in a different
community) was able to visit with the local pastor and his family. They own a starter home with dirt floors and
a corrugated metal roof. The pastor has
five children and lives off $20 per month!
The house is paid for, so there is no rent. He doesn’t own a vehicle or have insurance payments; certainly
there is no retirement to fund. Basic
food items such as rice and beans are inexpensive and fresh fruit is plentiful
in the countryside, yet still, $20 a month?
I wondered how he was able to feed his family of seven. Then I wondered why he didn’t use birth
control. As I thought about his
situation, it occurred to me, even if he had access to birth control, he
wouldn’t be able to afford it. Even
more significantly, having large numbers of children are the way the poor in
developing countries ensure their retirement.
When the pastor and his wife get older, they will have five kids able to
help them, which is an economic necessity but, of course, perpetuates the cycle
of poverty.
*****
As
we were able to meet and interact with our Nicaraguan hosts, we began to be
able to see beyond their poverty in order to see people. When first world folk travel we can’t help
but see the poverty, but in seeing the poverty we sometimes miss the people. As we got to know the people I was most
impressed with their spirit, their character and their faith.
One young man at
the Presbyterian Church in Managua is leading an AIDS prevention program for
youth and young adults. He feels called
of God to use his personal gifts of intellect and faith to reach youth and
young adults with the message of abstinence.
I was talking with this young man after the worship service and I asked
him what Nicaraguans need most from the developed nations. Without blinking, he said, “Respect. We need
to be respected as people who work hard and are special in the eyes of
God. And we need to believe this
ourselves.”
At this same
Presbyterian Church in Managua, the pastor told us how they came to be. He said they were a conglomeration of
pastors and families from several other protestant denominations who had become
disenchanted with their own churches.
They each studied what the different denominations stood for and decided
they wanted to be Presbyterians. They
gave five reasons: we are ecumenical, and respect other people’s faith; we are
prophetic, and work for justice in society; we are committed to education, both
religious and secular; we are biblical, and believe in studying the Word of
God; we are deliberate in our polity and government. I could not have been more proud.
As we went into
the countryside, we met folks whose lives were much more difficult than those
of folks living in Managua. The
countryside is heart-achingly beautiful and heart-achingly poor. But boy can those country folk work! My son Matt and I, along with Mary Alice
Cowen were digging a trench for the concrete for a house’s foundation. The jefe took up a shovel and started
digging along an adjacent side, so I picked up my pace a bit…you know, the
whole competitive thing. Well, suffice
it to say that the three of us dug more of our trench than the one of him did
of his trench over the same period of time…but just by a little, itty bit. The guy was probably 120 pounds soaking wet,
but he was a warrior!
One of the neatest
things we saw in the countryside was a tour of where we were staying. A mother and her two daughters run a small
coffee farm affiliated with CEPAD.
CEPAD is the community of protestant churches in Nicaragua; it is CEPAD
with whom we were staying and through whom we were working on this trip. A part of CEPAD’s ministry is to help with
community development. For instance,
for our work project, we were a part of a Nicaraguan version of Habitat for
Humanity through CEPAD. Well, an aspect of community development is to help
local farmers develop sustainable farming practices and to enhance their access
to fair trade markets. Both of these
goals are met by organizing local labor into cooperatives.
The coffee farm at
which we were staying had been a part of the cooperative system for seven
years, and it showed in their house. We
stayed in a house that had concrete floors, brick walls, electricity and six
rooms! By working together with others
in the cooperative, they were able to leverage their work and find a
comfortable, albeit still poor, lifestyle.
Not only did the cooperative help them at the markets, but they helped
them with their product. This farm was
a 100% organic coffee farm. They used
99% of their waste to make compost, their own fertilizer, everything. It was a labor intensive process, but one
that both decreased environmental impact and increased economic output.
*****
I hope you are
getting a picture of what it was like for us on the trip. Obviously, a large part of our trip revolved
around issues of poverty and justice.
The first few days were spent in classroom training as CEPAD brought in
economists, historians, water development specialists, and sociologists to give
us a sense of the challenges facing Nicaragua and how we as citizens of the
U.S. can help. We are a big part of the Nicaraguan equation.
Part of
Nicaragua’s problems stem from centuries of political and economic
oppression. For 300 years the Spanish
enslaved and exploited Nicaraguans through their colonialism. After the Spanish, the United States
routinely invaded and exploited Nicaragua, including having one of our
citizens, William Walker, declare himself president of not only Nicaragua, but
Honduras and El Salvador as well. In
1933, the Nicaraguan hero Augusto Sandino – who is a kind of Nicaraguan George
Washington – kicked out the U.S. Marines.
Unfortunately, the next year Sandino was assassinated by Anastasio
Somoza, with the complicity of the U.S. ambassador. Somoza, who famously said, “Nicaragua is not my country, it is my
business,” instituted a brutal dictatorship of economic exploitation protected
by the U.S. Franklin Roosevelt said of
Somoza, “he’s a sob, but he’s our sob.”
After 40 years under Somozan rule, the communists led a ten year civil
war to oust Somoza. The “Sandanistas,”
so named after the patriot Sandino, led the country with great hearts but lousy
heads. That is, from what I could gather, they seemed to be very well intentioned
but utterly clueless as they took an already broken economy and drove it even
deeper into the ground. In 1990, after ten years of the Sandanistas, the
country voted in the opposition party, which reverted to a capitalist, economic
system. But here is where the problems
get complicated.
As the great
economy to the north, we are the major influence upon their economy. Even if every Nicaraguan business made only
correct decisions and they worked as hard and as smart as is humanly possible,
they could not pull themselves out of poverty without our help.
One of the
missionaries with whom we spoke talked to us about the fair trade markets. Fair trade is the kind of trade that gives
livable wages for workers. The opposite
of fair trade is the infamous practice of using sweat shop labor or child
labor; such practices provide us with cheap products at Wal-Mart but sentence
millions of poor to living in squalor.
Shannon, who runs the only fair trade market in Nicaragua, a place
called Hope in Action, haunted us by saying, “When you drink you cup of coffee
in the morning, I want you to ask yourself two questions. First, who grew this coffee? And second, was she able to feed her family
today?”
One of the
economists with whom we spoke both praised and challenged us. He praised us by saying, “You Americans are
the world’s leaders in advocating for political rights as human rights. The entire world looks up to you for your
advocacy in this area.” But then the
economist paused before continuing, “but what you need to learn is that
economic rights are also human rights.
It is a human right to earn a livable wage for a day’s labor.”
In the conversation about economic rights as
human rights we learned that Nicaragua’s problem
is that we are looking out for our
own economic interests. For instance,
in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which Congress passed
last week, the U.S. negotiated some fairly predatory trade policies. According
to CAFTA, all medicines whose patents are still in affect will renew once CAFTA
is signed. This means that if a
medicine has one year left on its patent, once CAFTA is signed by both
countries that medicine restarts its patent term. The effect of this provision is that for the next 15 years there
will be no generic drugs in the country from any medicine patented in the last
15 years. This is good for the drug
companies and our mutual funds, but without generics, the poor will not receive
any medicine. This is just one example
of many.
Now, for those of
you following closely, you are no doubt thinking, “Why doesn’t the Nicaraguan
government simply fail to pass CAFTA?”
Good question. The problem is
that the government there is very much like the government here: money talks. CAFTA will devastate tens of millions of
poor in Central America, but it will benefit a chosen few Central American
corporations with political clout. So,
the question becomes, “Who should care about this injustice? Should we
care about this injustice?”
*****
It will be
tempting for us to leave today and say, “Nice sermon, but this is really not my
problem. It’s really their
problem.” Such a statement is tempting,
but would be incorrect.
While in Nicaragua
I preached twice. Both sermons were
preached from Ephesians. In Ephesians 1
Paul talks about God’s good pleasure, that it was God’s good pleasure to reveal
his will in us. Think about that: it
brought God pleasure to reveal his will in us.
Almighty God knew joy because of us.
But in chapter 1 Paul does not tell us precisely what this will of God
is that has brought God joy. At the
beginning of chapter 2, Paul tells us this revelation that brings God good
pleasure only occurred (and only occurs) through grace, and remember that grace
means gift. It is God’s gift to us to
reveal his will in us. And what is his
will? Paul tells us in 2:11-22: God’s
will is that we are one, new humanity.
It used to be,
before Christ, that there were Jews and there were Gentiles, two kinds of
people. It used to be, before Christ,
that there were Masters and there were Slaves, two kinds of people. It used to be, before Christ, that there
were Men and there were Women, two kinds of people. But in Christ, the two become one. “Christ himself is our peace,”
says Paul. “He has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing
wall of hostility” that inevitable is built between people who appear on the
surface to differ one from another.
It brings God joy
when we no longer say “them and us” but merely “us.” It brings God joy when we can reach beyond the urgency of our own
concerns to embrace a wider perspective where brothers want and sister cry for
justice. It brings God good pleasure
when we see ourselves not in terms of nations but in terms of the Spirit, when
we confess the true Christian faith that says, “We care about this injustice
for it is happening to us.” It used to be, before Christ, that there were
Americans and there were Nicaraguans, two kinds of people. But now, in Christ who is our peace, there
is only one, new humanity.
*****
Perhaps you can
see why I said earlier that, “What did you do?” is the wrong question. The proper question is not, “What did you
do?” but, “What was done to you?” What
was done to us was the work of God within us.
What was done to us was an act of the Spirit through which we have begun
to see ourselves as God sees us: as instruments of God’s peace for the sake of
our brothers and sisters, as those responsible to learn such things as the
difference between “fair trade” and “free trade,” as those called to imagine a
compassion and a concern large enough to embrace a father and mother who
struggle to feed their five children on $20 a month.
The mission trip has ended. The mission has only just begun.