Haiti Mission Trip, Day 6

Today is the anniversary of the death of one Haiti’s founders: Toussaint L’Ouverture.  Leader of the revolution against the French slaveholders and Napoleon’s army, L’Ouverture was betrayed to the French during the revolution.  L’Ouverture was taken to the harshest and coldest prison the French could find and basically left to die of exposure.  He died on this date in 1803, just a few months short of the Haitians’ victory over their enslavers.  As I said a few days ago, Haiti clings to its national existence with a tenacity born of a centuries-long struggle just to maintain it.  If I were Haitian, I, too, would remember the date of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s passing with a sense of dignity.

Dignity came to be an important theme in what we took away from today’s Haiti Connection conference, on macro and micro levels.  First, the macro:  Much of what we heard today advocated flattening the top-down, vertical model of mission that many of our congregations have been pursuing in places like Haiti, nearly always unintentionally.  When two parties come to the table, one with great needs and the other with great resources, the temptation to create dependency has been nearly irresistible.  In any given moment, those needs cry out – in this case, both the Haitians’ need for resources and the Northerners’ needs to follow Jesus and help the poor.  But when we meet those needs reflexively, we foster a relationship that really isn’t a relationship – at least not what we want that word to mean.  The Haitians come to see us as providers with fathomless pockets, and we come to see the Haitians as recipients who should both appreciate our benevolence and understand why we want to dictate its terms.  All that we’ve heard, and hoped, and dreamed here is about changing the model to one of mutuality – one in which both parties have value to contribute, benefits to reap, and responsibilities to fulfill.  We can offer money to buy food, pay teachers, and build buildings; they can offer a model of evangelistic fervor (and results), Scriptural depth, and abiding trust in God regardless of the moment’s outcomes.  Can we say which “side” has more to offer? 

So, the micro examples of these truths might look like this in St. Andrew’s relationship with St. Augustin’s Church and School in Maniche.  We’ve glimpsed these truths in past visits, but (for me, at least) they’ve come into relief in this one:

·         We need to be in relationship with people on the ground – even more “on the ground” than the priest who visits the school every couple of months, the superintendent who also oversees five other schools, and the headmaster who lives near Cayes and commutes up and down the mountain on his motorcycle every day.  We’ve been trying to meet with St. Augustin’s vestry when we visit, but that’s been only intermittently successful.  And it’s hard to build a relationship with an annual meeting.  In this day when some rural Haitian 7^th graders have cell phones, surely we can find a Maniche vestry member who’s on Facebook (the principal is; he and I are friends).  And by developing a relationship on Facebook, God willing, we can figure out how to broaden the network supporting the school to include a board made up of Maniche community leaders and parents, as well as church people.

·         We need to work with that board to create small profit centers involving the school so that some of its support can come from Maniche, not Kansas City.  At this conference, we’ve heard examples of churches starting small businesses that plow some portion of profits into ministries like schools.

·         We should change our funding model away from paying all the bills and toward providing scholarships (nearly total, at first) to defray educational costs for which the community bears ultimate responsibility.  That doesn’t mean cutting people off; it means reversing the expectation over time such that the community receiving the benefit bears ultimate responsibility for ensuring that benefit is provided.

·         With responsibility reversed, we must give up control of the process for achieving results.  We and they agree on the desired outcomes; as the headmaster said, the school should be the best in the region, bar none.  But we need to leave it to the people who live and breathe the context to figure out how to achieve our common goal in that context.  We need to stop telling people what to do, live in what will be awkward silence for a while, and learn to listen to what our partners have to say

All that builds dignity, the most highly valued resource in Haitian culture and, by the way, a core value of what it means to be a Christian in the Episcopal tradition (we promise at each baptism to strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being).  Here’s a final micro example of dignity’s value here.  Dr. Stan Shaffer is with us but actually convening a different gathering; he’s working on building an international network of birthing centers like Haiti’s Maison de Naissance.  The idea is to share best practices among birthing centers, collaboratively solve problems, establish criteria for high-quality care, and award a designation as a “Good Birthing Center” according to those standards.  Here’s the question that came from the Haitian nurse-midwives at MN at the end of those discussions:  Can we get a literal stamp of approval?  Can there be a certificate of award?  Can we document, in an outward and visible way, that we have, indeed, achieved a standard of international excellence?

That’s a longing for dignity incarnate.

Haiti Mission Trip, Day 5

We’ve arrived back in Port-au-Prince after a four-hour-plus drive from Les Cayes this morning.  The “plus” was the time spent alternately sitting, creeping, and zooming in Port-au-Prince traffic.  Here, driving isn’t about safety; it’s about survival.  We made it after only a couple of close calls.  Par for the course.

We’re blessed to stay at the beautiful Hotel Montana for the next couple of nights.  It is in Haiti, but it isn’t in Haiti.  I’m sitting in the bar overlooking the city and harbor below, with clouds playing at the tops of the mountains on the opposite side of the basin.  Even with the deforestation and the troubled city below, the view is stunning.  The Montana also has the advantage of being high enough to catch the lovely breezes that never seem to blow through the city. 

The view from the Hotel Montana

Here, in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville, life is good.  It’s where the local elite and wealthy travelers enjoy Haiti as one imagines it could be – with (mostly) clean streets and dependable plumbing, even air conditioning and hot water.  It’s a place where you can enjoy “a feast of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear” (Isaiah 25:6).  Looking down on Port-au-Prince, you only see that the buildings are crammed next to each other.  You don’t see their condition from here; nor do you see the trash and stagnant water in the streets.  This kind of contrast between rich and poor is typical for developing nations, I know; but that doesn’t make it easier to see.  But it’s a good thing you have to drive through the city to get to Petionville from the airport.

The people here at the Montana for this Haiti Connection conference know the reality of rich and poor.  All of them are involved in work on the ground, far below Petionville.  The conference brings together Episcopal development efforts in education, health care, economic development, construction, and work with special-needs populations – and it includes the Haitian partners involved in those projects.  Roughly half the 200+ attendees are Haitians (though I don’t know that they’re all staying at the Montana).  Partnership is the theme, in terms of collaboration both between Americans and Haitians and among development projects.  It’s amazing how limited our scopes can be.  For example, St. Augustin’s School in Maniche might be a good candidate for solar power.  But what experiences have other partnerships had with solar?  I know of one (which wasn’t very positive), but that’s hardly a good sampling.  I’ll just bet we can find more over the next few days here.  We’ll also be sharing some of what St. Andrew’s has learned.  Carolyn Kroh is one of the presenters on educational partnerships, talking about her work to train early-elementary teachers in engaging, creative ways to teach concepts typically memorized in Haiti through recitation.  She has been a great blessing to our teachers in Maniche and all the Episcopal schools under Pere Colbert’s stewardship.

Stewardship … there’s a divine call that challenges me as I sit here in the Montana’s bar, enjoying the view.  Stewardship and justice, actually.  I believe there is huge value in gathering these people to learn from one another, Americans and Haitians from across both countries.  There is huge value in having these conversations onsite here, where the context is every bit as much part of the curriculum as the presentations.  And truly, the context’s chasm between rich and poor, in which we are clearly participating, is also there on the table for our consideration.  I don’t have a clean and satisfying way to reconcile why I get to sit here atop the cliff in Petionville, overlooking the beauty and poverty below me.  The poor will always be with us, Jesus says (Mark 14:7), and they are blessed in that God chose to come, and become human, among them.  The reign of God is about the miracle of us stewarding what God provides so that all may eat and be satisfied (Luke 9:17).  In our time in this place of poverty and abundance, may we help bridge the chasm both through what we give and through what we take away. 

Haiti Mission Trip, Day 4

Going up the mountains from Les Cayes to Maniche, the view from the back of the truck can be grand or demoralizing, depending on your social location.  For this visiting blan, it was wonderful to ride back there in the relative cool of this morning, experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of Les Cayes very much close up, along with the motorcycles carrying parents and kids to work and school, the occasional truck, and the many tap-taps.  Moving out of town and into the countryside, you exchange constant horns and exhaust for a more tropically bucolic scene – but you also lose the pavement and find progressively more “rustic” roadways.  Still, the air, the vistas, and the 360-degree scenery make bouncing on your bottom worthwhile. 

At least that was my experience.  Yesterday, our interpreter rode in the back of the truck because we picked her up last.  It occurred to me I should have offered her my seat inside, but we had taken off by the time I remembered my manners.  It turns out I should have asked Pere Colbert (who was driving) to stop the truck.  When I asked our interpreter this morning if she’d like to ride inside, she accepted quickly and gratefully.  “The people on the side of the road yelled awful things at me yesterday,” she said.

I wanted to know more, but manners suggested I not press her for details.  I wonder what this young Haitian business-management student endured, riding in the back of a pickup while the four blans rode in air-conditioned comfort.  In a culture where dignity is everything, her placement there probably evoked some ugly images of subservience.  Of course, it was the last thing any of us (including Pere Colbert) would have intended.  So, on several levels, it was good for me to ride in the back of the truck today – including the chance to get this video of crossing the river to St. Augustin’s School.

At the school, we took photos of the other half of the 300+ students.  Note to self:  Next time, start with the pre-kindergarteners and work up in age, rather than starting with sixth grade and working down to the tiny 3-year-olds.  My knees and back are not happy this afternoon.

As we took their pictures, we interviewed the kids (at least those in first grade and up) about their families, their favorite subjects, what they do for fun, and my favorite question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  The answers to that question seem to be growing in diversity and complexity as the years go on.  In past visits, we’ve always met a lot of future nurses, teachers, and physicians, and those are still popular choices.  But this time, we also heard from several future agronomists and business owners, two future priests (both female), a future linguist, and quite a few future members of the Haitian national soccer team.  These are dreams, of course – and that’s the point.  When children can dream, that says good things about what dreams may come.

The teachers are dreaming for St. Augustin’s School, too.  We met with the headmaster and teachers after school today.  Samuel Sauray, the headmaster, wants nothing less than his school to be the best in the area, bar none.  We asked how the teachers explained the school’s improvement in test scores, and they said it has much to do with St. Andrew’s commitment to provide textbooks for kids whose parents can’t afford them.  Sure, some political correctness may have been at play, but they have a point that students can’t complete homework without books.  Looking down the road, the teachers see a need for teaching assistants in classrooms with 40+ children (I know I’d need an assistant), as well as additional space to accommodate the growing enrollment.  From a perspective of scarcity, we can hear that and scoff, “It’s just a dream.”  But so was a hot-lunch program a few years ago.  And we already have the beginnings of a fund for new construction at St. Augustin’s.

We didn’t promise anything, of course.  As the wealthy blans dropping in for a visit, we’re always trying to be partners and not simply patrons; and it’s easy for both sides to slip into historic roles of recipient and benefactor.  Instead, we’re trying to dream, and plan, together.

Haiti Mission Trip, Day 3

First, a quick addendum to yesterday’s post:  The World's Best Offertory Ever was made all the better today with the discovery that the goat at the foot of the altar was “our” goat.  It came down the mountain from St. Augustin’s in Maniche, our partner church and school where we spent today.  Given the nature of the drive, on mountain “roads” that are more like riverbeds, I know why the goat was tired by the time it got to church.

Today was our first of two days at St. Augustin’s School.  Sadly, we got there too late to see the flag ceremony, which begins every school day.  All the classes – three levels of kindergarten and six elementary grades – line up outside their classrooms to raise the Haitian flag and to sing the national anthem.  It’s a nearly sacred act in a country where simply existing as a sovereign state has never been a given.  Colonization and slavery; a war for independence; forced reparations payments to the nation it defeated in gaining its freedom; decades of ostracism by the family of nations; absent commercial development; interventions by regional powers, including the U.S.; several strings of failed governments; strong leadership turned to bloody dictatorship; more failed (and self-interested) governments; a devastating earthquake; NGO work that often shunts indigenous leadership aside; and, now, political messiness that makes simply electing a president a seemingly impossible task.  Despite failures imposed upon it and failures of its own making, Haiti defiantly continues to exist.  And at countless schools across the land, young Haitians celebrate the dignity of nationhood every morning.

At St. Augustin’s School, we found good news to report.  First of all, we were struck by the fact that the kids look generally healthy and adequately fed.  That has not always been the case.  I remember visits when we could pick out the malnourished kids because of the dullness of their eyes and the orange tint to their hair, secondary to kwashiorkor (severe protein deficiency).  A few years ago, St. Andrew’s started a hot-lunch program serving beans and rice, a high-protein meal, to the kids every day.  I can’t say the lunch program has made all the difference, but it’s certainly made some of the difference. 

Half the first-grade class at St. Augustin's School in Maniche

Second, the enrollment has increased by about 50 percent in the past couple of years.  More than 300 students are packed into tiny classrooms that seemed too full the last time I was here, when there were about 100 fewer kids.  The first-grade class has about 50 children, all in one room we might put 25 into. 

That’s a function of other good news – that St. Augustin’s test scores have been rising consistently.  Our school is now among the top three in the Maniche area, ranking ahead of the Roman Catholic school.  And when we made home visits with some of the students this afternoon, we heard it from the parents’ mouths: They have a choice of schools (something we didn’t really understand until a few years ago), and they choose St. Augustin’s both because of its reputation in the community and because they see the progress their kids are making.  As one mother said, “I want my children to be able to know things I don’t know and do better than I could do.”  It’s the same story for any parents in Kansas City concerned with their kids’ educational opportunity.

Of course, success and growth bring their own challenges.  Fifty kids in a small classroom isn’t an example of sustainable growth; and every new student is also another mouth to feed, as well as another mind to fill.  We’ve known intellectually that St. Augustin’s needs more classroom space, as well as support for more teachers, books, and lunches.  This year, we’ve seen that reality up close.  The Fools for Christ’s Sake Dinner, coming up April 24, will be great opportunity to keep making a huge difference here.

We also encountered the kinds of endemic challenges mission work in Haiti faces.  This time, it wasn’t the natural elements; the river is down, and the truck could cross it “no pwoblem,” as the Haitians say.  Last year, we provided several laptops for class use.  Apparently battery life is compromised by tropical conditions, and we found today that the laptops’ current batteries can’t be recharged.  So, we asked about getting more batteries in Les Cayes, the city where we’re staying.  But of course, in a culture where few people own personal computers, batteries are scarce.  So we’ll see what we can find in Port-au-Prince.  As we discovered in a previous trip, running electricity (legally) to the school would involve multiple thousands of dollars.  But solar power generation?  Another school near Les Cayes is using it.  Perhaps that’s the next thing to consider, though I know Maison de Naissance, the Episcopal birthing center, didn’t have a good experience with solar power a few years ago.

Anyway, for every experience in Haiti – positive as well as negative – there is always the next challenge awaiting you.  As the saying (and book title) goes, in Haiti there are always mountains beyond mountains….

Haiti Mission Trip, Day 2

We’ve finished lunch after four and a half hours of procession, worship, and speeches this morning at St. Sauveur Episcopal Church in Les Cayes.  I was honored that Pere Colbert asked me to be among the 25 or so clergy concelebrating Eucharist – quite touching.  We processed through the city streets, arriving at the church about 9 a.m.  The day celebrated both the bishop’s blessing of the renovated building (which is beautiful and now has a balcony to accommodate the overflow crowds) and the 150^th anniversary of the arrival of The Episcopal Church in southern Haiti. 

As an event, the morning was tremendous.  Along with the bishop and the gaggle of clergy were three choirs, liturgical dancers, a band, the local mayor, and more people than the building could hold.  Folks were sitting on the stairs to the balcony and lingering at the doorways – for three hours of worship and another hour of speeches.  Sweating through a borrowed alb, I nearly stayed completely conscious.

There was another presence in the room, one I was blessed to glimpse at the beginning of our worship.  First, you have to know that the windows in Haitian buildings are open to the outside, so visitors from the animal kingdom are no great surprise.  As we gathered around God’s altar, singing with joy and power, I saw something near the ceiling out of the corner of my eye.  It was a white bird, flying from one side of the building to the other, then going out the window and on its way.  Rationally, I know it was a pigeon; but in my memory, it will become a dove.  I’ve had this sort of thing happen once before, at St. Andrew’s a few years ago, when a bird literally walked into the narthex one afternoon, flew around a bit, and finally flew back out the door it had first used.  I saw that visit, years ago, as a sign that the Holy Spirit wasn’t content simply to be in the church.  The Holy Spirit wants to lead us out of the church and into mission with the people around us.  Well, here in Les Cayes, I think it happened again.  The Spirit flew in, nodded approvingly, and flew on out.  I think we’d be wise to follow.

The other animal visitors today were brought by parishioners.  The accompanying videos show the World’s Best Offertory Ever.  Two explanatory notes:  The chickens eventually had to be removed because they started fighting at the foot of the altar (there’s a sermon in that); and the goat is alive (though tired, apparently).  We know, intellectually, that the Offertory is intended to be our presentation of all of our life – “our selves, our souls and bodies,” as the Eucharistic Prayer says.  Whatever we have, whoever we are, whatever we feel, whatever gifts we’ve received – all of that goes into the offering plate on Sunday morning.  Well, it’s one thing to know that.  It’s another thing to sacramentalize it, and that’s what the people of St. Sauveur did this morning in the World’s Best Offertory Ever.  

You know, even when the chickens we bring to the altar act up and start pecking each other; even when our goats lie lifeless; even when we don’t quite know where to put the flowers – in it all, the Lord God is well-pleased.  And probably chuckling.

Haiti Mission Trip, Day 1

We’ve made it to Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti after an exhausting but oddly energizing day.  The 6 a.m. flight from KC seems like it left a couple of days ago now….

Today (like every kingdom day, properly understood) was a study in trust.  Once we arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport and recovered our luggage, we wheeled a comically overloaded cart out the door.  That doesn’t sound like a particularly trusting thing to do, but we actually had no idea who was coming to pick us up.  The anonymous driver was supposed to be carrying a sign with Carolyn Kroh’s name, but specific expectations are something you learn to lose in Haiti travel.  Meanwhile, we had to run the gauntlet of probably 50 young men, all of whom would be competing to touch our overloaded cart and thereby earn a share of the tip.  But the drivers aren’t allowed to come into the terminal, so out we went.  As it turned out, the driver was there, complete with Carolyn’s name on a sign. 

The second case study in trust came from the driver himself (whose name I never could make out).  He led us to his vehicle, and the lucky designees from the gauntlet of young men offloaded the luggage cart, each of them earning at least five times a daily wage in Haiti in that one tip.  The driver made the payments and convinced the hangers-on to go back to the terminal.  He started the car, turned on the A/C (blessedly) … and sat there.  Before he even put the car into reverse, the driver closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and spent a couple of minutes in silent prayer.  I did, too.  Prayer is always a good idea; but if your driver is praying, it’s probably a good idea to join in.  He crossed himself, put the car into reverse, and made his way into – and finally, out of – Port-au-Prince.  The prayers were a wise choice, both in the city and along the “highway” toward the southwest region of the country.  Imagine people walking and riding bikes along the white lines of I-70, and you get the picture – but add dogs, goats, and pigs, too.

The third case study in trust comes from the Haitian people themselves.  Every time I come here, I’m struck by the seamless interweaving of the sacred and the secular.  Flannery O’Connor writes about the American South being a “Christ-haunted landscape”; if that’s true, then the spirits of all the saints are alive and well and inhabiting Haiti.  Everywhere you look here, you see proclamations of trust in God.  And you need only look at the oncoming traffic and the businesses lining the road.  Most of the tap-taps (multicolored trucks serving as public transportation) bear proclamations above the windshield, and most of them are faith statements.  Here are a few I saw today:  “Merci Jesus” (thank you, Jesus), “Grace Divine,” “Fils de Dieu” (Son of God), “Jesus Mon Seul Espoir” (Jesus, My Only Hope), and “Jesus Revient” (Jesus is Coming Back).  Looking from the oncoming traffic to the businesses you’re passing by, you move from sublime proclamation to stunning mash-ups of deep trust and commercial necessity.  Here are some actual business names we passed:

·         Nouvelle Jerusalem Salon

·         Merci Jesus Bric-a-Brac

·         Grace Divine Pharmacia (maybe that one works)

·         Lumiere de Dieu Reparation d’Auto (Light of God Auto Service)

·         Le Sang (Blood) de Jesus Boutique

·         Jehovah Store

·         Christ Capable Matériaux de Construction (building supplies)

·         And perhaps my favorite – Pere Eternal (Eternal Father) Lotto

These may strike us as amusing, but there’s more there than meets the funny bone.  Day in and day out, people here take their faith to the level I think God would like to see from us all: to the level of deep trust that acknowledges God’s sovereignty and overwhelming love, regardless of the outcome we get in a given moment.  You see it everywhere you look in Haiti – Grace Divine.

Miracles of Trust

[Sermon from Easter Vigil, March 26, 2016]

Tonight – as we take this stunning journey from the darkness of sin and death into the light of Christ’s resurrection – tonight seems an appropriate time to reflect on the latest darkness trying to extinguish the light.  That darkness is this week’s terrorist attack in Brussels. 

Like shootings in our public spaces, terrorist attacks have taken on a depressingly familiar narrative in our national life.  Violence strikes like a snakebite; we spend time with the news channels, unable to look away from the carnage; we argue about who’s to blame, filling in the identities of those we mistrust or fear; we consider new steps we think might control the power of sin and death; and at the end of the narrative, we’ve become just a little more afraid than we were the week before. 

Myself, I believe that is our real threat: fear, leading to despair.  That’s the real enemy – not the perpetrators, not even death itself.  For tonight, we see and hear that we need not fear death or its perpetrators.  For those who put their trust in the God of Moses and Isaiah and Ezekiel – for those who put their trust in God’s ultimate Word and our risen Lord, Jesus Christ – for us, death has already been vanquished.  It’s a battle we don’t have to fight.  I know that I will die, and I know that I will live.  The details of that certainty are secondary because they don’t change the story’s ending.  So on this side of eternal life, the real enemies are fear and despair, because fear and despair seem to confront us new each day.  Just check your news channel of choice. 

It’s enough to test our faith, just as fear and despair tested the faith of our ancestors.  Ezekiel, in his vision we heard tonight, comes into the valley of dry bones; and the Lord asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” (37:3)  It was a pressing question, because this prophet of Israel’s exile shared his people’s worries about whether they’d endure conquest and captivity.  How about us?  What are your deepest worries, the driest bones you know?  Maybe the everyday reality of terrorism?  Maybe the incivility of American politics and government’s failure to govern?  Maybe the suffering of refugees – or the threat some think they pose?  Maybe your own broken relationships or the fears that lay siege to your heart?  What dry bones rattle long and loud enough to keep you up at night?

Let’s think about someone else who had some serious worries – the disciple Peter.  In the Gospel story, Peter doesn’t even get the security of bones to look at.  When he comes to the tomb, the body’s gone.  Has God raised Jesus, as the women proclaimed?  Or have the grave robbers gotten in to desecrate the body, adding insult to Peter’s injury?  For Peter, that injury isn’t just the death of Jesus.  Peter’s also struggling with the death of his own courage three nights before, when he denied the Son of God to save his skin.  Those bones rattle loud in Peter’s head even while the women’s proclamation rings in his ears.  Their call to trust in what simply couldn’t be true seems as absurd as God asking Ezekiel to make dry bones “hear the word of the Lord” (37:4).  The women’s “words seemed to the disciples an idle tale, and they did not believe,” Luke says (24:11).  So Peter goes to the tomb himself, looks in, is amazed at what he doesn’t see – and then he goes home.  He must have told the rest of the group eventually; but for the moment, he just goes home.  Maybe he needed to sort out what he really thought about all this.  Could he find a way to make sense of what the women had said and the empty tomb he’d seen?  And if so, then what was he supposed to do? 

After all, things hadn’t ended well between Peter and Jesus, especially the way Luke’s Gospel tells it.  There, we have the familiar scene of Peter denying Jesus three times while Jesus stands before the high priest, on trial for his life.  But Luke’s account adds a chilling detail, an image Peter couldn’t get out of his mind.  As soon as Peter denies Jesus the third time, Jesus turns away from his accusers and looks Peter in the eye (Luke 22:61).  That look leaves Peter broken and sobbing.  So then, three days later, as Peter hears what’s supposed to be Good News, I imagine him thinking, “Oh my God – if it’s true, how can I ever look him in the eye again?” 

I imagine that might be true for some of us, as we hear the resurrection story.  Maybe we hesitate to believe in resurrection because of the personal implications of this grand story we’ve lived tonight:  If it’s true, is my conscience clear?  If I’ve denied Christ – explicitly in things I’ve said and done or, a thousand times more, implicitly in things I haven’t said and done – if I’ve denied Christ, then what?  If I’ve only signed up for an affiliation with the Church to hedge my bets, just in case this Jesus stuff is real – then what?  What do I say when I take his Body in my hand at the altar rail?  What do I say when the resurrected Christ takes my hand and looks me in the eye?

Well, on this night of absurd new life, here’s my advice:  Turn away from fear and despair, and let Jesus take your hand.  That’s what Peter finally did.  He knew he’d failed; he knew he couldn’t love the way Jesus wanted him to love.  And still, at the end of the story, he said “yes” to Jesus’ call to feed the sheep.  No matter where that path would lead, no matter what he suffered along the way, Peter knew it was the way – the way of life.  That’s our journey, too, a journey that begins again this night – the journey with Peter from amazement to belief to trust. 

And in this world where unholy forces always compete for our allegiance, our temptation is to stop two-thirds of the way down the path – to stop with belief.  As I said the other night at Mary Lynn Coulson’s ordination, we take those first words of the Creeds a bit too literally the way they’re translated into English.  We say “we believe” in God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.  OK.  Maybe we believe that, intellectually.  But do we trust in God as the source of our being, our liberator from sin and death, and the power of our resurrected lives day in and day out?  It’s one thing to acknowledge something’s true.  It’s quite another to stake your life on it.  But that’s precisely what God asks of us this night.  Jesus has done the hard work, putting himself through hell, literally, to vanquish Satan and extinguish the darkness of death with the light of life.  Christ has won the war – but he leaves it up to us to win the peace. 

We don’t have miracles to perform.  We have miracles to trust.  That is the primary work Jesus leaves to us: that we would revel in the light of his victory and bear that light to a world that prefers the darkness.  For when we trust, God moves mountains.  When we trust, miracles happen once again.

And that should come as no surprise.  After all, a mumbling, unwilling desert outlaw eventually led his people out of slavery and into freedom in the Promised Land.  After all, the oppressors who tried to drown the children of Israel in the Nile were themselves drowned in the Red Sea.  After all, a people once enslaved became God’s missionary presence to kings and nations.  After all, the water that once flooded the earth and destroyed humanity became God’s instrument for cleansing our hearts and adopting us as beloved children.  After all, a stumbling and cowardly Peter, sure he had failed for all time, became the Rock of the Church, the leader commissioned to feed and tend Christ’s sheep.  After all, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we now walk in newness of life, dead to sin but alive to God forever (Romans 6:4).  These are miracles we can trust.

In our most challenging moments – maybe more often than not, if we’re honest about it – we join the people of Israel in their lament that “our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Ezekiel 36:11).  We live in that valley of fear and despair more than we’d like to admit.  But when we trust, Jesus the conqueror leads us out of the valley of the shadow of death.  When we trust, miracles happen.  For thus says the Lord God to all of our dry bones:  “I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people….  And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  I will put my spirit within you,” says the Lord, “and you shall live.” (Ezekiel 37:12-14)