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RSSSeptember 5 , Proper 18
by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton for ERD
9/5/2004
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Philemon 1-20
Luke 14:25-33
Psalm 1
"Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?" -- Luke 14:26-27 (NRSV)
It’s hard for most of us to read or hear about the devastation of HIV/AIDS in Africa. To watch stories about it on television. It’s not because we don’t care. We do care. But we can’t look—because the whole terrible thing seems so enormous that we despair of ever coming to the other side of it, of ever seeing its end.
But here is a great truth about any daunting task: everything human beings do is done one piece at a time. We never do the whole of anything—we do everything piece by piece. It is this truth which makes it possible for the people closest to the suffering to carry on with unbelievable courage in the face of this deadly scourge. The people actually on the ground in Africa have no choice but to walk into it day by day, to tackle all of its many facets one by one. And what about those of us who wish to relate to them, from our too-comfortable distance?
The Rev. Diane Corlett, Rector of the Church of the Nativity in Raleigh, North Carolina, traveled to South Africa and Namibia to see for herself what television and newspapers had telling her about AIDS. She and five others journeyed to both countries as part of Episcopal Relief and Development’s Ubuntu Africa Pilgrimage. The pilgrimage provided a unique opportunity for participants to visit programs and speak to beneficiaries where ERD is actively working in communities affected by HIV/AIDS. A nurse before her ordination, Ms. Corlett is not a stranger to illness and death. "But my heart bleeds when witnessing pain," she wrote in the journal of her trip. "HIV/AIDS is as much a part of this world as the weather."
Do you have enough to build your tower? Do you have enough courage and compassion and money and knowledge to build a bridge to suffering people you will never see except on television or in the newspaper, to build it all by yourself? No, you don’t. And if we each had built our bridges all by ourselves, we would have no reasonable alternative to despair.
But we don’t. We build our bridges together. We go step by step together through tragedy too terrible to experience alone. Addressing the piece we can do first, and then doing another piece. And another. Day by day, piece by piece, person by person: that is how all of life is lived. And how even great tragedies are healed.
The pain of other people’s pain was joined on the Ubuntu trip to something that can only be called joy at the many piece-by-piece ways in which HOPE Africa, the development arm of the Diocese of Cape Town, abides with men, women and children living and dying with AIDS. Foster care for the children and arrangements for the burials. Food for the hungry and notebooks and new pencils for the start of the school year. Hugs from a caregiver and visits from the priest. Instead of collapsing in tears at the sight of orphaned children living in an institutional setting, Ms. Corlett and her companions on the Ubuntu trip found themselves blowing soap bubbles and laughing with them. Because, bruised as they are, they are still children, and they still love to play.
The journey The Rev. Diane Corlett and her fellow-travelers took to Africa was called "Ubuntu." The word is a Zulu word without a precise rendering in English—but its meaning is that we are never alone. We are only people in relation to other people in the community of people.
Or, as Ms. Corlett puts it, "If the children and people of Africa have to live through it, the least we can do is make ourselves look into their faces and pay attention to what they have to say."
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.
