I’d like to take a look at that first hymn that we sung today, number 384, Praise to the Lord Almighty, because it brings together some of the elements of the Covenant we have with God and the benefits of them. “If with his love he befriends you,” is the way the hymn puts it at the end of verse 3. The hymn is a song of praise to God, describing the personal relationship with us. It describes the outcome if we live with God in our heads and hearts, if we live our lives as Christians, if we behave as Christ would have us behave.
He shelters us under his metaphorical wings and sustains us when we need shelter and support. When we entreat him through prayer for what want for ourselves or for others, he grants. Not that we always understand what he grants nor necessarily appreciate it, but we believe that prayer helps us. I am sure that many of you can remember and attest to a time when prayer helped you through a crisis. That is why we have the Prayer Requests and the Anglican Cycle of Prayer.
On a daily basis he defends us in our work and makes our works prosper. Whether the works are an annual play, the food bank or a fund raising dinner, he helps us in our activities, some of which are related to us being Christians and some are not.
When we seem to be living in a dark age, he surrounds us with his light if we ask for it. You may remember a couple of years ago a girl was killed on Boxing Day, caught in the crossfire between two street gangs in Toronto and some trials from that incident are taking place now. In a situation like that, the dark side seems to be winning. There is the story of Freddy Villanueva in Montreal North where who is the good guy and who is the bad guy gets very confused, but the strength of what Star Wars called the dark side seems strong. In these situations, a simple faith in God, simple prayer, can be helpful and calming for us.
So, God shelters, defends and provides us with his light when we need and request it. Now let’s take a look at verse 4. When tempests their warfare are waging, when the elements are madly raging, He bids them to cease, He turns their fury to peace, assuaging whirlwinds and waters. He does? What do we make of this in the light of Haiti?
We live in a wonderful world. At a service a couple of months ago, I talked about what a beautiful part of the world we are in. We have mountains and lakes, which are not just beautiful to live in and look at, but also provide work for those in, for example, the tourist and forestry industries. This world of ours is also a terrifying place which can exact horrific penalties on those who collide with its more dangerous features.
I think of the father and his 13-year old son who were out snowmobiling on the Lake of Two Mountains when they went through the ice last week. I think of the men last summer who were killed in northern Quebec when their helicopter crashed into a ravine, too far from settlement to be found in time. I think of the athlete who was training outside a military base near Quebec a few years ago and was fatally attacked by a bear.
Some of these tragedies can be laid at our door, individually or as the human race. We are sometimes the authors of our misfortunes by doing stupid things, taking bad decisions. Sometimes we are taking over territory inhabited by animals which react. Global warming certainly has origins in our behaviour and we only know the half of it at this stage. Other explosions of nature we have no control over. The ice storm, the volcano eruption that all but destroyed Montserrat, another island in the Caribbean, a few years ago. So how do we respond to the disastrous, catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, given the hymn that we have just sung about how God shelters and defends us?
I could at this stage start discussing original sin, how we are all sinful because of our free will to be good or bad, and occasionally God wreaks his punishment on us, but I don’t think that’s very helpful. I am not a theologian, a climatologist or an expert on volcanoes, so I prefer a more practical approach.
Why does the tragedy in Haiti touch us so deeply? Why is it such a big event compared to the hundreds of thousands who die in the monsoons in Bangladesh, for example? Clearly many reasons. Haiti is close to us geographically, and is on our continent, so it has a more immediate impact. Some of us have been on vacation in Haiti and have enjoyed the fruits, literal and metaphorical, that the country had to offer. We have a very significant Haitian population in Montreal, also elsewhere in Quebec and to some degree elsewhere in Canada. Haitian-born people are throughout our society, from professors to taxi drivers, from accountants to construction workers. Who doesn’t know a Haitian-born Canadian amongst friends or colleagues or acquaintances?
The scale of this disaster makes it impossible to be indifferent to the suffering it has caused. The physical suffering of those injured. The mental suffering of the millions who have lost a loved one, a relative a friend. And in this case it is not usually one friend or relative, but multiple ones. As many have said over the last few days, Haiti is a country that really didn’t need this. It was already devastated by poverty, crime and corruption, but was slowly climbing out of its misery with the strength from within and help from without. So the scale of this new layer of misery laid on top of the others makes it almost too hard to bear, even to watch from afar.
And watch we do. We can like or dislike CNN and 24-hour blanket news, but the immediacy with which disasters are now communicated to the rest of the world permits and prompts a response. Haiti is the most recent example of the news being a major factor in speeding up the help to a devastated place.
Many of the readings today have talked about the love in the relationship between God and us, individually and as the human race. Now is a time in which we can exhibit our side of the Covenant. If the two most important Commandments are to love God with all our strength and to love our neighbours as ourselves, then we have an opportunity to love our Haitian neighbours.
The second lesson from Corinthians talked about us all having different gifts and being able to use them in different ways. “There are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit, a variety of services but the same Lord, varieties of activities but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” As Christians with different gifts we can each respond in our own way to the plight of those in need. For some who are in the emergency services, we see them actually going into Haiti to help directly.
For many of us, the response is more likely to be indirect, giving money no matter how much or little in the buckets at Canadian Tire or Maxi, or sending food or clothing if that is asked for by the Canadian Red Cross. For others, it might be giving access to a computer or a telephone line to someone trying to contact loved ones. For others, it might be prayer, strong, direct prayer to help the people of Haiti.
It really doesn’t matter what the specifics of our responses are, as Christians, we are challenged to love our neighbours as ourselves in a special way, doing whatever way we can or whatever we are called upon to do.
Amen
Hugh Mitchell
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