Crisis and Connection

A Sermon About Helping in Haiti

When I was a kid I proudly packed a shiny silver cap gun in my dime store holster and donned a wide-brimmed felt hat—just like all the other kids in my sleepy Shenandoah Valley hometown of Harrisonburg, Virginia. TV had barely entered our remote world, but radio was ripe, and we all instantly recognized the neighing of a horse and the clopping of hooves, signaling that the Lone Ranger was on his way.

The Lone Ranger was our anonymous hero. Galloping into our bedrooms to the strains of the William Tell overture, astride a silver-white steed and peering through a mysterious mask, he fired only silver bullets and vowed to fight injustice wherever he found it. He invariably won the day, and then wheeled his trusty mount around, hollered “Hi-yo Silver!,” and galloped off into the sunset.

I think that the Lone Ranger was the first rugged individualist I ever met. Rootless, he acknowledged personal debt to no one. Invincible, he displayed no vulnerabilities at all. Omnipotent, he prevailed over every adversity. He offered heady inspiration for a bunch of five year olds running off steam with their smoking cap guns and dime store hats, but he was much more viable on radio than he was in the real world.

In the real world, St. Paul sagely reminds us, real people just can’t pull it off. We are all from somewhere, raised by someone…how else could we ever have made it through the first year of life? We are all vulnerable, under uncertain circumstances, to all kinds of risks and dangers. Just ask anyone who sank their nest egg into real estate in late 2007, at the height of the buying boom. And nobody wins all the time anyway. Remember when the Mariners miraculously took the American League West pennant back in 2001, and the Seahawks shot to the Super Bowl in 2006…seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?

Paul reminds us that playing Lone Ranger, trying to take life by storm like some kind of rootless, invincible, omnipotent champion, is just a childhood fantasy. God has created us to give and take in real relationships far bigger than our own agendas. True, sometimes one of us sees a bit farther, or goes a bit farther, than somebody else. But zoom in on the rise of any high achiever and you’ll find feet squarely planted on the shoulders of other people.

Sometimes it takes a major crisis to help us remember that, and that crisis arrived big time two weeks ago when a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti leveled most every structure in this impoverished nation, killing 200,000 and injuring 250,000 more. The quake took out the few meager sources of drinkable water survivors had, as well as the cell towers and control controllers aid crews urgently needed to get help to the worst hit areas.

Such suffering cries out for compassion and response, and shows us what Paul means when he says that God has arranged us into a body of humanity for mutual service and aid. God’s highest hopes for our behavior is that we will continually care for one another, for better or for worse, through thick and through thin. “If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.” There are no Lone Rangers in God’s real world, and there are no Lone Rangers among the believers we meet in the Bible—only flesh-and-blood creatures God has made to pitch in together and do together what no one could do alone.

The unfathomable disaster in Haiti has done something jolting for us which crises always do. As with 9/11 in 2001, and again with Katrina in 2006, this earthquake has shaken up our complacent, self-absorbed attitudes and routines, and brought into bold relief what St. Paul says. Last week members of St. Michael’s gave a total of nearly $1,000 for relief work in Haiti. It was transferred by bank card to Episcopal Relief and Development, and this week we will be continuing the effort by gathering and sending funds on again. And we are not alone; not only are churches all over America digging deep to put life-saving dollars into helping hands—Christians are by far the biggest charitable donors in our nation--but incredibly valuable help is also coming from some unprecedented places.

I’m talking about late-breaking uses for electronic connectivity that most Americans take for granted: cell phones and computers. Dateline Seattle: KIRO’s web site reports that national mobile phone carriers have together raised more than $28 million in relief funds for Haiti. How? By encouraging their customers to send a free text message to 90999, and keying in the word Haiti. This quick and painless act adds a mere $10 to the customer’s next cell phone bill, and 100% of the proceeds go immediately to the Red Cross—at the cumulative rate of about $200,000 per hour. When there is good news for one member, Paul says, all can rejoice.

Dateline Washington DC: CNN reports that last weekend a band of computer programmers, tech corporation executives, professors, and government tech specialists gathered for Crisis Camp Haiti sessions in five major US cities. Their sole mission was to brainstorm ways computer technology could help in the aftermath of the quake, in support of relief crews on the ground. Their quick start inspired spin off sessions across Europe and South America as well. Early ideas included building an open-source layer map of Haiti that relief crews could use to coordinate efforts; creating an on-line locator system for families seeking news of loved ones; building a Twitter-like communications tool to keep relief workers in touch in real time; and, basically, any other high tech strategies that could speed and support aid efforts. The only rule was that no rules would stand in the way of pursuing their single shared purpose. By the power of the Spirit, Paul says, we are all part of one body.

I cite these two examples because they show how scripture’s insistence on caring never goes out of style, and is never out of place. God has made and wired us human beings for relationships with one another. God has made us to live in communities, and communities of communities, over the longest imaginable haul, for everyone’s unforeseeable benefit. The fact is we cannot live without one another—live, that is, in any truly human and meaningful way.

One day, long ago, Jesus stood in a synagogue and read from the scriptures, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind…to proclaim the time of God’s favor….Today this scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing.”

Scripture fulfilled in our hearing, right here, right now in 2010…running its current through our bank cards and cell phones and computers. That is very good news for us indeed. Amen.

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