With God All Things are Possible

Mark 10:17-27

        Knowing that I was going to be in Haiti most of this week, I reached into my barrel of sermons and pulled out one on Mark 10:17-27 that I had preached a few years ago.  I read through it and felt confident it would be well received.  I even tweeked it on the first day or two of my trip.  Day three I threw it into a trash can.  Maybe sometime in the future I will bring it back out and share it with you.  It was a pretty good sermon but it does not really capture what I would like to share with you today.

        This morning’s text is a difficult one to read.  It has a statement or two which we would like to place in a dark corner and forget.  First Jesus said, “Give all your money to the poor and follow me.”  Then a few verses later he exclaimed, “Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.”  It has always been amazing to me that for thirty years folks in the Presbyterian Church have been fighting over differing views on sexual orientation based mainly on a few couple obscure passages in Leviticus and Romans yet when Jesus raises his voice on what is clearly an issue of our economic priorities, we scratch our head and figure Jesus was just talking to one guy and not us.

        Friday morning I pulled into the driveway at about 2:15.  Delays and a couple of mishaps along the way had made our trip from Haiti quite lengthy.   I was anxious for my life to return to a normalcy which included an 8:30 T-time with my regular Friday group.  As I approached the club house, I was informed my group had played the day before and every one was going to a meeting concerning the fate of my golf life as I now know it.   26 hours before I had been sharing breakfast with Haitian orphans.  Now I was listening to questions about 10% discounts on food and clothing items for members of the Wintergreen community.  It just doesn’t get much weirder than that. 

        We all know while Jesus said some things that that give us great comfort, the flip side is he kept coming up with those pithy sayings that sort of stick in our craw.   We can ignore those words, we can claim there is a real separation between our faith and our everyday world, we can even suggest that maybe Jesus was being metaphorical. But the problem is, if you are going to read the gospels, you are going to find out Jesus had some interesting things to say concerning wealth and priorities.  So I have two choices this morning.  I can get real preachy, a habit which tends to make me a bit sanctimonious. Or I can tell you about a person I met in Haiti and hopefully that story will cause you to give thanks that we attend a church which takes the sayings of Jesus seriously even when those texts ask us to risk having our eyes opened to the economic reality of our local and extended neighborhoods.   Those of you who wanted me to rant endlessly and ultimately make you feel guilty can take me out to lunch. We can even go to the Stoney Creek Grill.  I think my 10% discount is still good.

        Before last week I had not thought about Haiti a whole lot.  I tend to be more of a Central America kind of guy.  Haiti always seemed to be a place just waiting for the next disaster to happen.  My nephew, a Captain in the Army, was with the initial group of the 82^nd Airborne that landed in Port-au-Prince following the earthquake.  After being there for an extended period his evaluation was that the whole area should just be bulldozed into the ocean.  Many folks agree with my nephew.  After all in a country of approximately 9 million, half of them live in Port-au-Prince.  Two years after the quake, 500,000 men, women and children still reside in tents.  Unemployment in Haiti ranges from 50 to 75 percent depending on who you ask.  Malaria and cholera are wide spread. Why should we pour time and money into a nation which seems doomed to economic and public health catastrophes? 

Those are good questions but before dismissing Haiti, I strongly suggest you read Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health, on his understanding of Haiti or you might consider spending time in Haiti forming your own opinion. There are no easy answers. But I do have the story of one man who followed the advice of Jesus and has made a difference.

       

        Mark Hair, 49 years old, is from Ohio.  He is the son of a Presbyterian minister but did not see seminary in his future.  Mark went to Michigan State and graduated with a degree in agriculture and Public Health.  In the late 1980’s Mark spent a few years in Nicaragua and eventually was invited to be an agricultural missionary for the Presbyterian Church. Currently he works in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and in Haiti.  Mark and his wife Jenny have two small children.  They live in the Dominican Republic where Mark spends two weeks a month.

        When Mark picked us up at the airport in Port-au-Prince, he said, “I am taking you to the mountains.”  He did not lie.  What he forgot to tell us was he was taking us to places where few Haitians and fewer Americans had ever been.  We spent the week with small farmers who are trying to carve out a life for their families in a place in which they have to fight the weather, the soil, and government intervention.  Their plight is pretty much the same plight of any farmer in any part of the world.

        Mark follows the doctrines of two men.  The first and the most obvious is Jesus.  When Mark arrives in those villages he only carried two things; what was in his head and what was in his heart.  His heart was full of a love for a people that have been manipulated and marginalized for the past thirty years.  He continually promises them God has not left.  Instead God walks beside them offering new ideas on how they might create sustainable crops in a way that is not dependent on foreign and domestic intervention. He encourages the farmers that the education of their children is as important as the development of the crops.  He celebrates with them when it rains and he has taught them new means of irrigation when water is scarce.

        Mark has also brought them the gospel of Jean Baptiste Chavannes, a “community organizer” in the purist sense of the word.  Chavannes, a farmer and the son of a farmer, has been organizing farmers since 1976.  He has been teaching them how to fertilize without chemicals and how to grow crops with minimal soil.  Chavannes heads an organization of over 30,000 farmers who don’t own a tractor between them.  He preaches of education in which the  mind is not just something to be filled but rather the learner is a co-creator in the process.  Some of you will recognize that this is borrowed from  Paulo Freier who wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Chavannes believes farming in Haiti is only successful when it disregards conventional wisdom and returns to the methods used when the ground was fertile and crops were grown to sustain the local population rather than being exported for international taste.  Chavannes and his organization are inviting the displaced in Port-au-Prince, to come to the mountains and become farmers.  With the help of organizations such as the Presbyterian Church and The Quaker Society, small communities are being built and sustained by local crops.  What this means is your mission dollars are currently going to support an effort to rebuild Haiti, one family at a time, by restoring an ancient skill and offering the education needed to give their children a chance of becoming self-supporting.

        The problems are many.  Will the Haitian government continue to allow Chavannes and his farmers to work independently?  Will the Haitian government resist the urge to bring in new multinational projects that have proved disastrous in the past? Chavannes started this work when he was 23 and is becoming an old man.  Who will succeed him?  Will Haiti be given a break by Mother Nature?  The earthquake had no real effect on the farmers but erosion, created by the eradication of trees over the past 30 years, has taken its toll.  Until those trees can be replaced, each storm is both a blessing and a curse. In addition there is the disease that comes from no sewage or adequate water systems. The problems are immense and yet God is at work.  I witnessed it every moment I was in the mountains.  Through the smile of children, the touch of calloused hands and the joy in their songs I witnessed a people who believe with God all things are possible. It has given them hope, a sense of purpose, and they intend to create a new heaven in a place most folks assume has gone to hell.

        Mark Hair is a big part of that hope.  Your mission dollars are a big part of that hope.  We who are rich have been given the resources, the opportunities, the pleasure of changing lives, even changing nations.  Imagine being part of something in Haiti that actually is working.  Some people would say our involvement would be foolish, even reckless.   But I have seen the mountains with my own eyes.  I have eaten their food.  I have been touched by their stories.  God is there.  Through the work of Mark Hair, we are there.  And one day, I fully believe what is going on in the mountains of Haiti will be exported to the minds and hearts of farmers in America, allowing a new and needed revolution to happen in our own agricultural system. Whoops, I’ve gone to preaching and I promised not to do that.

        Let me end by saying this.  Pray for the people of Haiti. Pray for all people who are poor. Then allow your riches to make those prayers achievable.  This week I have witnessed miracles in a place mere mortals thought nothing was possible.   We so easily forget.  With God, Nothing is Impossible.               Amen.