No statute of limitations on compassion

I have never been to Haiti. Dan Dick has. Ann made Dan’s acquaintance just a few months ago, when he came through Eau Claire for his work. This is what Dan remembers of his visit to Haiti:

• We had three teenage women with us on my first trip. They played rhythm games with the Haitian girls in the lantern light, laughing and hugging, though they could not communicate with words.
  
  
• We brought a bag of used tennis balls and the children acted as though we gave them gold when we passed them out. They played with them non-stop for hours on end.
  
  One day we made balloon animals for the children, and they stood wide-eyed, mouths agape at the magic we performed. Even when the balloons deflated, the children collected the colorful rubber scraps and proudly treasured them — making bracelets and belts from them.
  
  
• Administering very simple first aid — people lining up as far as the eye could see, then bursting into tears over the simple acts of removing splinters, applying salves, or confirming that a child wasn’t seriously ill.
  
  
• The willowy young woman who sang and danced throughout worship and led a procession to the offering baskets where coins were deposited before she herself stepped into the basket, making an offering of her life to God.
  
  
• The voodoo priestess who told me she was also Catholic, Jewish, Presbyterian, and a Rotarian (she proudly wore a Rotary pin…) who had pictures of the Pope, Jesus, and Tom Selleck in her small shed.
  
  
• The little boy who belonged to the village but had no parents. He would take every possible opportunity to sit on the lap of any person who stopped to sit down for five minutes. He would climb up and almost instantly fall asleep.
  
  
• Landing at the airport and walking through platoons of unsmiling armed military guards — and the five-hour customs process where a third of our possessions were confiscated.

That is the Haiti one visitor remembers, and it was the Haiti before last week. It was the Haiti that most of us didn’t know, never saw. The Haiti we know is the one we’ve watched on television or read about the past six days.

One friend of mine said she couldn’t sleep Thursday night after watching the images of this earthquake ravaged country for an hour before she went to bed. If we’re not there, we can’t grasp the enormity of such a disaster, so we grasp at images, clips, snippets of the devastation.

• The man wandering into a pile of rubble of what used to be his house, opening the refrigerator to see if he could find any food there.
  
  
• Hospitals collapsed upon themselves.
  
  People fighting with one another over food rations that are only beginning to trickle into the country.
  
  
• Maybe it’s that Cuba has allowed U.S. planes to fly over its normally closed airspace to relief supplies can reach Haiti’s people faster.
  
  
• Or the impromptu parade of Haitians in Port-au-Prince who took to the streets singing on Friday, because when you can’t do anything, what can you do but appeal to God with every bit of your voice?

Their singing was an inspiration, but there is no brilliant diamond to find in this rough, no “feel-good moment” that puts it all in perspective and makes it OK. Some have asked this week: there is so much suffering in the world. We still remember Katrina, on our own shores, or the tsunamis of the Indian Ocean in 2004 and Sumatra last year. How much limit is there to our compassion? Is there a statute of limitations on our ability to respond?

Maybe this one hurts the way it does because it’s so close, only a couple of hundred miles off the shore of Florida. It’s devastation that – if it doesn’t hit close to home, then it hits close to America’s vacation home (the Caribbean.)

Or is it really about proximity? Is it that this week’s Scripture (1 Corinthians 12:1-11) becomes real in a new way even in the midst of this tragedy?

If we are the body of Christ, then we remember that the body of Christ represented a great paradox: It was a crucified body. We, as the body of Christ, aren’t perfect. We are subject to death and suffering. When the Haitians hurt, we hurt, too. They are us, and we are them.

In this body of Christ, we do have different gifts. That’s not just an observation. It’s how we are made, for the good of the entire body. In the response to tragedy,

• Some are gifted, and therefore called, to go to Haiti – maybe now, maybe months from now – to join in the struggle, to bring relief, to help rebuild.


• Some are gifted, and therefore called, to give – maybe this morning, maybe in a systematic way over the coming weeks – in order that this enormous humanitarian effort might be helped in every way possible.


• Some are gifted, and therefore called, to make clothes, so that those possessing only what’s on their backs might regain some dignity.


• Some are gifted, and therefore called, to pray – with fervor, with focus, with sustained intent, with sincerity, for all members of the body of Christ … for us, that we remain compassionate, and for those who don’t know where to find food, where to sleep, where to go to the bathroom, where to drink, where to bathe.

To say that we are the body of Christ means we feel it when other parts suffer. It means because we have different gifts, God can work through us in different ways to respond. It means that God works through us for healing and redemption.

How we respond to another in need is a good measure of how we respond to God. When we participate as the body of Christ in the life of Christ, we are participating in the work of Christ, which is resurrection and hope.

Finally, because we are the body of Christ, God hurts with us. God is with us amidst our grief. A former seminary colleague, Eric Conklin, said this as well as anyone last week:

“God is with us and is more faithful than even the strongest bond between parent and child. And this is good news. One day, we too may be trapped in the rubble with only our thoughts: no food, no water, no sign of life around, the very breath being crushed out of us. And God will be there with us. One day, we too may be mourning at the tremendous loss of life that surrounds our house. God will be there with us. One day, we too may be piling up our friends and neighbors into mass graves, and God will be there with us.

The images are grim, but they are the reality for a million of our brothers and sisters in Haiti at this very second. There is hope amid the calamity. There is friendship amid death. And all the while there is a God who has been a partner through the very worst of it all. As a people to whom Christ has turned, we respond with faith to our brothers and sisters who have God comforting them now in their moment of grief.”