MDG Sunday June 8, 2007
Luke 4: 1-6
Jesus sent 70 out 2 x 2 to spread the good news of the kingdom of God. Jesus is still sending us out in order to proclaim the good news of God’s love to all we meet. Some of our mission efforts are obvious – the mission trip to Honduras, the work done through the thrift shop, the mission trip to the Gulf Coast, then there are less obvious but just as important missions, local and global. When you give to ERD or Heifer you are feeding the hungry, bringing water to villages, helping build a sustainable food supply for those who have so very, very little. It is good to go away from home and see the face of poverty in real terms. You are changed and can never retreat behind defensive walls that excuse our efforts. While in Kenya, I saw poverty, slums with people living under a worn piece of tin or cardboard, children begging or digging in the trash for a few crumbs. In villages so poor that the goats were skinny and the children often sick with preventable diseases the clinics if staffed at all were a long way away. The children in on clinic were stacked four to a bed with one nurse to oversee their care, aided by family members in constant watch. The Walter Reed medical staff build clinics, provide improved infrastructure and capacity and in the process of giving medical care they are modern missionaries. They may not preach the Bible but they bring good news to those captive to disease and trapped in astonishing poverty.
In Africa, home to the fastest growing population of Christians on the planet, more than 300 million live on less than $2 a day. Greedy local political leaders with access to Africa’s resources may have stolen more than 700 billion $ from illegal dealings in oil, diamonds, and timber, while each year 2-3 million Africans die from AIDS and 3 million new infections occur annually. Nigeria is one of the most politically charged regions in Africa with almost two decades of conflict and destruction between Christians and Muslims. If the archbishop of Nigeria would head north toward Kano in Nigeria instead of west to Falls Church Virginia, he could play an important role in reconciliation – the true mission of the church, maybe take a page from the peace and reconciliation committee of South Africa led by Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela.
Using the failure of public leaders to maintain integrity and avoid the temptations to greed and corruptions absolute power offer as an excuse to not help the poor who suffer under such tyrannies is not acceptable within our baptismal covenant. We are not given an escape clause of who we should help and under what conditions. We are simply called to work for peace and justice and to respect the dignity of every human being.
I believe that Jesus spoke the words in Luke’s Gospel – reading from the scroll of Isaiah – to define the mission of the kingdom of God. I believe that Jesus by his life – the incarnate word of God – used this passage knowingly to define his ministry. I believe that Jesus sent 70 missionaries out 2 x 2 to get some practical experience while he was still there to coach and mentor them. The work Jesus sent the 70 to do are the same things Jesus did and said by way of the inauguration speech he would do. I believe that Jesus calls you and me and every baptized person to the same ministry. I believe that Christ wants us to be local witnesses to the love of God through Christ in our communities and to walk the walk and talk the talk of compassion, justice, and peace. Reinhold Niebuhr posited that justice is love in action and that there can be no peace without justice.
We can do no better than join with the Presiding Bishop and our House of Bishops and embrace the Millennium Development Goals as a practical mechanism to work for the kingdom of God today. The goals emerged from the UN meeting in 2000 populated by representatives from 147 countries.
8 goals:
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Achieve universal primary education.
Promote gender equity and empower women.
Reduce child mortality.
Improve maternal health.
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
Ensure environmental sustainability.
Develop global partnership for development.
The summer science and ethics course was fun this year. Twenty-three students read assigned materials, found new material, shared it and wrote wonderful essays. It was amazing how little they knew about the global view of infectious disease and scientific progress. The discussions of international clinical trials using western norms, such as autonomy, beneficence, and justice caused students to rethink their earlier claims that we have no universal understanding of ethics. Assessing the merit scientifically and ethically of placebo trials in preventing HIV transmission and failure to offer treatment once the trial ends caused some to assert that such practices are nothing more than profiteering. When challenged to craft a fairer way, someone proposed that every big business doing profitable work in the international arena give a title of their profit for the benefit of the poor and other goals listed in the MDGs. Once we see the face of poverty, lack of education, clean water, and the health tragedies of infectious diseases it is hard to look at for profit motives without wondering how much profit is enough. If the students claiming little or no religious background or inclination can see that justice calls for greater distribution of goods and services in order to create a world in which all can prosper, why is it hard for Christians to do the same? Justice is not merely rearranging assets, it is seeing every other person in the way I believe God sees them as precious sons and daughters longing to live a life of dignity and respect. I believe that God has set his spirit on you and on me so that we too will know that we are sent to bring good news to the poor, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
In our world today, the mission of bringing good news to the poor is linked to the goal to eradicate extreme poverty. Achieving universal primary education releases the captives of poverty and liberates them to work in communities to have sustaining jobs and independence. Jesus honored women and men, against the values of his time and culture and religion, rescuing the woman from a stoning and blessing the one who anointed his feet with oil and tears – equality for women – human rights include women’s rights. Children were welcomed to come and sit on the lap of Jesus as he taught the crowd, and children suffering poverty, hunger, and disease deserve our compassion and welcome as well. The familiar hymn, the Magnificat of Mary, proclaimed, be it to me according to your word, and Mary received the message of the angel and bore the child and named him Jesus. In that vision we capture the call to intervene for better maternal health. Jesus healed the lepers – will we heal the lepers of our day, suffering from HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria? When God walked in the shade of the garden calling out to Adam and Eve, it was God’s will to make them and us stewards of all of creation. I asked my grandson, Jeremy, if he though global warming was real. He looked at me as if I were teasing, realizing I was serious, he said, I know it is real, I stood on that boat in Alaska and watched the glaciers calve into the sea.
Jeremy just returned from ten days in Austria, with a group from People to People: the project begun by Dwight D. Eisenhower during his presidency to build friendship and increase understanding among cultures. Jeremy and his delegation played soccer: they lost to Norway, Finland, and Germany, but they made new friends and saw much of Austria in the process. A significant portion of the pictures Jeremy took was from a concentration camp, memorializing the victims of horrific injustice. Liberating the captives after World War II allies and natives alike were shocked at the atrocities carried out by physicians in the name of science. The Nuremberg Code was written along side the United Declaration of Human Rights. In recent trips to Kenya and Thailand it has been my job to see that the elements of the Nuremberg Code are still being kept – that human beings are not subjected to experiments without their consent and that the science is reasonably hopeful enough to justify enrolling human subjects. It is always a concern that poor people, anywhere, will enroll out of vulnerable desperation. Ethical oversight and international cooperation helps protect the vulnerable and make small increments of progress in the direction of justice. Neibuhr was right in saying there can be no peace without justice. We must remain vigilant in advocating for human rights, for women’s rights, for children’s rights, for the rights of research subjects. We are citizens of one creation; one world, and only global partnership will sustain development that will secure the future of generations to come. God’s time is always the present time. Now is the gospel proclaimed in our hearing!