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RSSDecember 5, Advent II
12/5/2004
Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15: 4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
Psalm 72 or 72: 1-8
“Now John wore clothing of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” -- Matthew 3:3
To us, John embodies voluntary asceticism of a most emphatic kind --- he chooses to live where he lives, dress as he dresses and eat what he eats. For him, these rusticities are prophetic, calling the people of Israel back to their roots in the wilderness, where they were responsive to God's leading.
But there are people in Darfur today who live like John lived -- eating grass, eating insects -- and they have not chosen any of this. Not at all. They have little to eat and sometimes they have nothing at all. They have been turned out of their homes in the night and pursued into the darkness, they hide in the rocks with their children and pray that the marauders will go away before daylight reveals them. They travel on foot to refugee camps, carrying only what they could grab in the dark. Their hard life is not voluntary. They didn't choose it.
John is pointedly not a power person. Not a government official, a religious official, not any kind of official. John is the ultimate outsider. In Sudan, we read in the newspaper, the power people in the government and the power people among the rebels have recently agreed upon something like a cease-fire. You wouldn't know it in Darfur -- if anything, the violence has increased in the past few weeks. It is difficult for aid workers to get into large areas and deliver the supplies they have brought for the refugees -- the mosquito netting, the plastic sheets for building temporary shelters, the polio vaccines. Meanwhile, people continue to starve, to lose their homes -- 70,000 people in Darfur have starved to death or died of disease since March of this year.
The repentance John preached is often assumed to be individual repentance -- turn your life around, he says. And John was certainly talking to individuals about their own sins. But John's life -- his appearance, his rejection of political authority -- was itself a political act. John is poor for the poor. John's very self is political for people who are too defeated to be political. The women and children of Darfur aren't political -- they're exhausted. They just want a safe place to sleep, food to eat. They just want to live.
And how about us? Are we political? When we give to the poor, and our representatives are barred by a corrupt government from carrying out their mission of mercy, we are certainly caught in politics, even from our safe distance. We see John, strange prophet of the wilderness, listen to him denounce the powerful, know that we are not ourselves among the powerful people who will decide the things that determine who will live and who will die in Darfur. That is not within our sphere of capability. But Episcopal Relief and Development has been working with partners in the region to provide assistance in the refugee camps, and so we can stand in prayer and support with those who will help, poised with them at the edge of the settlements from which they’re having a tough time getting into -- we from our safe distance, with our donations in support of the brave workers who will actually make the first forays back into the devastated settlements as soon as they are allowed to do so.
Hang on, mothers and children. Hang on, grandparents and wounded. Hold onto life long enough to receive our help. Be strengthened in your time of need by our prayers throughout faraway America, and we are sending help. It is on the way.
Written by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton for ERD. Episcopal Relief and Development saves lives and builds hope in communities around the world. We provide emergency assistance in times of disaster. When the immediate crisis is over, we rebuild devastated communities and offer long-term solutions in the areas of food security, health care, and HIV/AIDS.
