What Can I Do?

A friend of mine is involved in a Christian mission organization that does work in Haiti. It runs several literacy centers - little schools back in the hills ... back in the hills where some children have been reduced to near slavery. At four in the afternoon, when their labours are done, these children are able to come to the schools to learn how to read and write and do arithmetic.

One day, he was at a landing strip in a rural area of Haiti. A small airplane is supposed to pick him up and fly him back to the capital of Port au Prince. As he stands there searching the sky for the airplane, a woman comes toward him holding her child in her arms. The baby is emaciated. His arms and legs hang from his little body as though they are sticks. The child’s stomach is swollen, not because he’s had too much to eat, but because he’s had nothing to eat.

The woman holds up her child to my friend – this child with the rust coloured hair characteristic of malnutrition and shrunken face – and she begins to plead with him, “Take my baby! Take my baby! Please, mister, take my baby. If you don’t take my baby, my baby’s going to die. Take my baby. Please take my baby.”

He tries to tell her there’s nothing he can do to help her. He tries to explain that he can’t take her baby. There’s a language barrier! He tries to look away, but no matter which direction he turns, she’s in his face pleading with him to take her child.

He’s relieved when the single engine airplane comes into sight. The minute it touches down at the end of the grass landing strip, he runs across the field to meet it. But the woman comes running after him screaming, “Take my baby! Feed my baby! Save my baby!”

He climbs into the plane as fast as he can and closes the door. He tells the pilot to rev up the engine, “Get us out of here!”

The engine comes up to speed, but not soon enough. The woman is alongside the plane, holding her dying child in one arm and banging on the door with the other. But the airplane pulls away from her and goes down the landing strip, then into the air.

My friend said he was halfway back to Port au Prince when it hit him – he realized whom he had left behind on that grass landing strip. It was Jesus. He didn’t really know the name of the child, but he could hear the words of Jesus recorded in the scripture passage we read today from the Gospel of Matthew, “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.'

Half way back to the capital of Haiti, sitting in that little airplane, he realizes Jesus had been mystically present in that starving child … and when he rejected that child, he was rejecting Jesus …

I tell you that story for a few reasons …

First of all, to remind us, the problems in Haiti did not start with the hurricanes and the earthquake, the gangs and the governmental collapse. Haiti has been one of the poorest countries in the world for decades. People were dying of hunger, violence and malnutrition before the earthquake in 2010 when some 300,000 people died. Because of successive corrupt governments, the continual exploitation of the poor and powerless, and violent gangs - Haiti has been a mess for a long time.

I also tell you that story because I think Haiti is just one example of the tragic circumstances faced by so many exploited people around the world. That story of the starving child in Haiti could have come from Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Chad or the Congo. We live in a world of haves and have-nots, and the distribution of wealth and the earth’s resources are not, at all, shared equally by the people who populate this planet. There is much work to be done before each child born into this world can expect to receive sufficient shelter, food, clean water and education.

I tell you this story, because it’s clear in my mind, Jesus has a great concern for the welfare of all God’s children. Jesus spoke out against injustice, and he defended the rights of the poor and the oppressed. Two thirds of what Jesus has to say in the Gospels concerns money and possessions and how we should relate to them. And the way he expects his followers to handle their wealth … is to share it … And the way he expects his followers to act, is with great concern for the poor and the disadvantaged – to work towards an equitable sharing of the world’s resources.

So, in light of the passage we read today from the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we have to ask ourselves, “Are we doing enough in helping the disadvantaged of this planet? Are we generous enough with the abundance we possess?”

Clearly Jesus expects his followers to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty and clothe the naked, not just at times of international disaster … but everyday – striving for a world where no one is hungry, thirsty or naked.

The Christian and Irish singing star, Bono, of the rock band U2, graphically illustrated the problem. At a U2 concert he asked the audience for some quiet. Then in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone... "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.”

Now, I know … I know the problem seems so vast, “How can I make a difference? Isn’t this a problem for politicians and giant corporations to solve? What difference can I make? If they’d just stop having babies!”

Let’s face it, we’re tired of hearing about it!

Fundraisers talk about “donor fatigue.”

Some people have seen too much already, and they’re turning away from all the appeals to feed the hungry and the starving.

I understand that … I can’t criticize others for their lack of giving, because I don’t do enough. The kind of generosity called forth from us by God is in a higher spiritual realm than I have ever attained. I don’t know whether I get any points for recognizing that in myself – my own selfishness … my desire to hang onto my own money rather than give it away.

But I know this … the story Jesus offers to us in the Gospel of Matthew is trying to tell us, we are all the beloved sons and daughters of God. We are, each one of us, unique and different with our own particular set of characteristics, hopes, dreams, abilities, strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages; but in the eyes of God we are all of equal importance and stature and worth. There are no unimportant souls. There are no unimportant people. There are no “throw away” people in the eyes of God.

Do you ever watch those specials on TV for World Vision or the Christian Children's Fund? Probably not, but you can't help but notice the existence of such programmes as you flip through the television stations. It's hard to overlook the forlorn, hopeless eyes of little children with swollen bellies and skin diseases, and some of them on the very brink of death. And I suppose as we view those pictures or videos, we experience a variety of feelings and emotions - there's hopelessness and impotence, there's frustration and a sense of being burdened, or maybe overburdened or fed up. Perhaps you simply want to turn away and forget what you’ve seen.

It's hard for us, because at least in comparison with those people, we're rich. But the problem of helping seems so big and complex, and mixed up with politics and civil wars and governments that don't even care about their own people. What can we do? How can we solve the problem?

My missionary friend told me another story from his time in Haiti ... One day, he comes down from the hills into the city of Port au Prince, and he stays overnight at a hotel that serves upscale clients from the United States. He gets out of the car - he’s walking to the entrance of the hotel, when three little girls intercept him. He says, "I call them girls. They looked to be about thirteen or fourteen ... fifteen at the most. They'd painted some lipstick on and were wearing mini-skirts," but my friend says, "I want to tell you, it's hard to look sexy when you're hungry ... and you're fourteen."

The one in the middle says to him, "Mister, for ten dollars, I'll do anything you want, all night long."

He turns to the girl on the left and says, "You? Can I have you for ten dollars?"

She says, "Yeah."

And he turns to the girl on the right and says, "How about you?"

She says, "Yeah."

My friend says, "Fine! I've got thirty dollars and I want all three of you, and I want you all night long! I'm in room 210. I want you up there in a half hour."

Then he rushes into the hotel and gets to his room. He phones down to the front desk and says, "I want every Disney video you have, and I want them up here immediately!"

And then he phones down to the restaurant and he says, "I want four huge dishes of ice cream with caramel sauce and sprinkles and chocolate chips. And I want the ice cream up here in exactly half an hour."

The little girls knock on the door, and he lets them in, and he sits them down on the edge of the bed. And the man comes with the videos, and the woman comes with the ice cream. And they eat some ice cream and they watch some videos, and they laugh at the Disney cartoons ... and they laugh into the wee hours of the morning. And by two A.M., each of them in turn has fallen asleep on the bed.

My friend says, as he sat there in that stuffed chair, watching over these three innocent looking prostitutes – 14 year olds! - he thought to himself, "Is there any significance to this? I haven't solved any problems! Tomorrow, they'll be back on the street selling their bodies." He knows nothing has changed. He didn't know enough Creole – the most common native language - to have a conversation with them ... nothing has changed. However, a little voice inside his head, or maybe it’s inside his heart, says to him, "But … for one night ... for one night, you let them be little girls again … children. For one night, they escaped the horror of it all ... they were just able to be little girls.”

We cannot solve the problem. It is not possible for us to complete the work of curing the world of the poor, the homeless, the needy, the hungry - but this does not give us the right to draw back from the work or to do nothing.

Perhaps you and I can make a difference for one person, one precious soul, one child of God.

Oscar Romero, the former Archbishop of El Salvador, who was murdered because he stood up for the rights of the poor and the oppressed against an uncaring and corrupt government wrote these words … I love them …

Here is what he says …

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete … the kingdom always lies beyond us.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation

in realizing that. This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,

but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference

between the master builder and the worker.

We are prophets of a future not our own.”