Builders of a New Earth

Isaiah 61:1-4;Luke 1:47-55

A sermon by K. Toivanen at EMUC, 12/14/2008

I’d like you to imagine that your life as you know it is in ruins. Your neighbourhood and community are shattered - perhaps by war or by the devastation from a storm. Your usual networks and sources of support and security are gone - an economic crisis has erased the financial institutions you depended upon - a pandemic disease has wiped out huge numbers of people leaving a skeleton crew to look after health care, education, police & fire protection and other community services. Ecological disaster has dramatically changed the climate and the landscape - food is hard to come by and clean water and air are at a premium.

And to add to the hardship, some are taking advantage of situation, using the misery and the vulnerability of others for their own selfish gain.

Now into this grim reality, imagine some weird guy standing before you announcing:

As you walk away in disbelief and wondering about the state of his mental health, you almost run into a young woman…a girl actually, no more than 16 years, and by the looks of her, half way through her pregnancy. In spite of her obvious poverty exhibited in her worn clothing and unwashed state, her face radiates hope and joy. And she is singing at the top of her voice for all to hear:

Poor thing, you think…with all the stress of being pregnant in these terrible times, she has lost touch with reality.

But wait, aren’t these the same words that were spoken in ancient times by the prophet Isaiah and Mary, the mother of Jesus? Didn’t Isaiah speak about freedom, comfort and rebuilding out of the ruins to his people who had just returned from living in exile in Babylon? Didn’t he speak these words to a people who stood before the actual ruins of the temple in Jerusalem? Didn’t he speak these words to people whose land and communities had been devastated by years of occupation by an enemy nation?

And didn’t Mary sing her song of God’s blessings as one of the poor and lowly and hungry during the occupation of Judea by the Romans? A time when taxation drove many peasants from their land; a time of hunger and disease, a time of political and religious oppression under the cruel reign of King Herod.

To their audiences in those ancient times and to any audience suffering greatly in any time, don’t their words seem audacious, ridiculous and impossible?

So, what are we to do with these scripture texts? Are they just another example of how unrealistic and impractical faith can be?

Unrealistic and impractical as they may seem, such texts have also been viewed as dangerous. In Guatemala during the 1980’s, the government for a time forbade the reading of the Magnificat in public precisely because of its revolutionary implications. Interestingly enough, the dictator at the time was a man named Jose Rios Montt, who in addition to being a brutal dictator was a Pentecostal preacher at a large church where he preached every week. During his leadership, he presided over the death of countless thousands of Mayan Indians. It is not hard to imagine why Rios Montt would not want the Magnificat to be read, because it was a direct challenge to his rule.

It’s important to understand that both Isaiah and Mary had no illusions about the reality that they were living in. They could see as clearly as anyone else the ruinous state of their nation, and the poverty, oppression and hunger that afflicted so much of the population.

And yet they sang and proclaimed a revolutionary future; a future of a repaired, restored and rebuilt world where God’s blessings would become real for all peoples and all creation.

Of course, the words of Isaiah and Mary are not meant to be taken as news reports, but rather as poetry, inspiring and calling on people to live into God’s future, to be a people ahead of their time, a people who perceive, anticipate and participate in building God’s coming reign of peace and freedom, justice and joy.

Well, you may say, that’s all nice on paper, but how do we actually live into God’s future? How do we live as a people ahead of our time anticipating God’s coming reign of peace and freedom, justice and joy? What does it look like to come face to face with the ruins in our own lives and the ruins in this world of ours and to be builders of a new earth? Perhaps these two stories will give you a glimpse of how to be builders of a new earth.

Some of you may have recently heard or read about Trevor Greene. His story has been in major Canadian newspapers with a special interview this week on CBC radio along with a documentary on CTV last night.

Frankly, I had forgotten about Trevor…I actually thought he had died.

Most of us first heard about Trevor in 2006. A journalist by trade, Trevor Greene had always been drawn to the plight of the dispossessed. While living in Vancouver he had written a book on the women missing from the Downtown Eastside; some years before, while living in Japan, he had published a book on Japan's homeless.

In 2006, at the age of 41, Greene was in Afghanistan as a reserve officer. In Canada he had left behind his fiancée, Debbie Lepore, and their baby daughter, Grace. In Afghanistan, Greene was particularly eager to tackle the issues of bringing education to girls and women. He was part of a provincial reconstruction team, a unit dedicated to helping Afghans rebuild schools, roads and wells.

On March 4, 2006 his unit was deep in Taliban territory when Greene sat down to attend a routine meeting or ‘shura’ in a village north of Kandahar. He laid down his gun and removed his helmet as a sign of respect for the village elders.

Moments later the soldiers heard someone yell "Allah Akbar." A 16-year-old boy rushed up behind Greene and heaved a crude, homemade axe into his head, shattering his skull and cleaving his brain in two.

Greene was transferred to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany and Debbie and Grace flew to be with him. Remarkably early CT scans showed that memory centres and centres for consciousness had not suffered detectable injuries. With this fragment of hope, Debbie, Grace and Trevor flew home to Vancouver. But the news turned bleak with the doctors’ prediction that Trevor wouldn’t come out of a coma. They urged Debbie to place Trevor in a chronic-care home and walk away.

Shocked, but unwilling to give into this reality, Debbie decided to commit to an alternative future. Ignoring their advice, she decided to take over and rallied a team of people to work with Trevor using reflexology, music, pictures, and energy work. It was a year from hell as Greene fought for his life through bouts of pneumonia, bacterial infections and surgeries.

But there were glimmers of hope. One day, Debbie saw his eyes move as she put a letter up to his face. On another day he mouthed Debbie’s name, and on another he moved a finger on his left hand.

Again, against professional advice, Debbie fought for Trevor to have appropriate rehabilitation, eventually securing him a place in the world-renowned rehab facility in Ponoka, Alta., called the Halvar Jonson Centre for Brain Injury.

At the Centre as Greene grew more aware, his consciousness expanded and the overwhelming reality of his loss finally hit him. Debbie remembers it as their bleakest time. With the help of military peer counsellors, and with a mantra that Green recited over and over - "I am committed to banishing despair, depression, anxiety and apprehension from my life." - Greene managed to rise above the pit of despair.

Today, with the help of family and friends who raised funds, Trevor is finally out of the hospital and settled with Debbie and Grace in a new house in Nanaimo. Every day Trevor goes to work out in the garage, which Debbie is slowly converting into a physiotherapy gym. He has a couple of hours a week with a neuro-development therapist, and a couple more hours with an occupational therapist. The rest of the time, Debbie works with him in the garage. It is painstaking and slow work of re-patterning and re-engaging muscles that have atrophied for so long.

There will be many, many small steps before the big ones Trevor dreams of taking when he walks down the aisle Debbie in 2010. But, according to Trevor, you need to ‘Find something in your future to move toward.’ And Debbie adds, "There is no resemblance to our old life at all. The life we are experiencing now is so much richer in so many ways. This is life at its fullest." Clearly, here are people committed to rebuilding new lives out of the ruins.

The second story comes from Malawi, one of the most impoverished African nations; a nation decimated by the AIDS pandemic. And yet, in a report in the Winter 2008 edition of ‘Grassroots’, a publication of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, there is a remarkable story of rebuilding out of the ruins.

It’s the story of Consol Homes. With support from the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Alfred and Yasinta Chapomba started going door to door in a village to get support for a preschool centre, where 63 tiny orphans could gather for story-telling, emotional support and health-monitoring. Soon, Consol Homes grew to offer feeding and school fee support for school-age orphans as well. Even more radically, it offered participation in the Orphan Affairs Unit (OAU) which is run by the youth themselves where they learn skills and confidence in leadership. They’ve shown their leadership in raising money for school fees and uniforms, helping to build homes and tending gardens for grannies, identifying cases of sexual abuse, and promoting skills training.

In just eight years, Consol Homes has grown to 107 child care centres serving more than 30,000 children, with more than 500 community volunteers covering 1,200 villages. Hundreds of grandmothers are harvesting more ample crops since Consol Homes began distributing fertilizer; 500 students have their high school fees paid; 9,780 vulnerable children are regularly given food to take home; home-based care workers tend to the sick; committees of widows help the newly bereaved; village self-help groups are participating in microcredit initiatives and opening bank accounts.

In 2008 Consol Homes was recognized by the global community and awarded the 2008 Red Ribbon Award by UNAIDS. And yet this remarkable work it all started with a couple who envisioned a different future for a community devastated by poverty and disease.

Like Trevor & Debbie, like the folks of Consol Homes in Malawi, we are all called to be a people who envision a different future; God’s future for our own lives, for the communities where we live and for this earth that is our home. We are called to be a people who are ahead of our time, a people who can sing and celebrate now the coming of God’s reign of peace and justice - a coming that we anticipate in Advent as we wait for the birth Jesus Christ.

Some may sneer or laugh at us and say that we’re dreamers or idealists who are getting ahead of ourselves, but you know, they’ve always said that about people who were ahead of their time. It has been said about Isaiah and Mary, about Trevor and Debbie, about folks in Malawi, about ordinary folk working in desperate situations, and it will be said about us.

And yet we are inspired and encouraged by a joyous hope and a contagious spirit; for the same spirit of God that came upon Isaiah and overshadowed Mary still moves among us today. So let us join our voices with Isaiah and Mary as in our lives we magnify God’s loving power and participate in building a new earth. Amen.

-details of Trevor Greene’s story were taken from articles in the ‘Toronto Star’ and the ‘Vancouver Sun’.