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RSSNovember 21, Pentecost Last, Christ the King
11/21/2004
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:35-43
or Luke 19:29-38
Psalm 46
"Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." -- Luke 23:40-41
Like the recurrence of a nightmare, we have watched the horror of the Sudanese genocide unfold. It seems to us that we have been here before: ethnic cleansing, midnight roundups of men for killing, women and children for terrible sport. People walking away from their ancestral homes forever, out into a wilderness where there is no food for them to eat. Why must this happen again and again in the world? What did little children do to deserve such suffering? What can we do to help?
The world community's efforts to relieve this situation continue, often in ways that frustrate us. Few of us occupy the positions of power that could bring the pressure to bear on it that might end it. All of us, though, can express solidarity with the men, women and children who have suffered so in that faraway desert by joining with Episcopal Relief and Development. ERD, in partnership with Church World Service, is providing food, medicines, emergency health care, and access to clean water to the most vulnerable displaced people in the Darfur region. ERD is working with Christian Outreach Relief and Development to help refugees in three camps in Chad, near the border with Sudan. Through the partnership, vulnerable women and children will receive mental health care services and children will attend schools in the camps. In Kenya, where many Sudanese refugees live in camps, ERD trains adults in vocational schools so that they might be prepared to earn a living, even though their lives have been so cruelly uprooted, the directions of them so cruelly changed.
Usually, we speak of someone as being "Christlike" because of his or her remarkable goodness, but people are also like Christ whenever they suffer unjustly. We are all in Christ, those of us able to help and those who must accept help.
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.
