THE TRUE LIGHT THAT LIGHTENS THE DARKNESS

Text: Mark 13:24-37

Today we begin the season of Advent, the time of preparation for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ. In comfortable places like Canada, we generally think of Advent as a time to get geared up for Christmas: shopping for gifts, sending cards, baking cookies, decorating the house, planning our holiday entertainment. In much of our world, even as we speak, those things are not even on the horizon. People in Mumbai, India, a city of more than 10 million people, mostly very poor, have even more to contend with this week: a terrorist attack in the financial district which targeted foreigners, killing 120 people, injuring more than 300 and holding others hostage. And it isn’t even clear who did it and for what reason. The lack of information makes it more frightening because people don’t know what will come next and if they are in danger. You can’t protect yourself against the unknown. So in Mumbai, people have more on their minds than getting ready for a big holiday celebration.

But not everyone in Canada is basking in pre-Christmas warmth and looking forward to the holidays. The recent financial meltdown has had dire consequences for people who depend on the stock market for income, on workers in the automobile industry and the forest industry, on people who work in construction and in the housing market. And it’s tough for people with large debts and seniors on pension incomes. The CBC in Calgary did a survey this week: 800 people responded and 51% of them said they plan to spend less on Christmas this year; another 8% said they were making their own gifts and 10% said they were not giving any gifts. Only about a third of those who responded said they intend to spend about the usual amount on Christmas. Well, for most of us that isn’t a tragedy, but it will have an impact on those who make a living in the retail business.

Do you ever have the feeling that you live a charmed life? That when most people in our world struggle with poverty, and many of them are constantly hungry and undernourished, our concerns are kind of trivial? In fact, we feel a fair amount of guilt about being so well off. We don’t exactly know what to do about it. We are blessed to live in a land of peace and plenty, and it doesn’t make sense to wish that we were poor. We wish everyone could be as fortunate as we are, but we know that realistically, it’s not possible for everyone on earth to live so well - there aren’t enough resources. So what can we do? Find out what people need and share what we have.

The fact is, we may not always be so fortunate. And that doesn’t mean that God will stop blessing those of us who have peace and plenty. Sometimes God even blesses people with conflict and need, though we often don’t see that kind of struggle as coming from God. Yet we can’t assume that God only cares about those in the western world and blesses us with material wealth. We see in Jesus’ way of doing things that he has a special care for the poor and suffering. So our turn may come when there will be struggle and difficulty. The recent troubles in the economy make it seem possible. Perhaps we should prepare ourselves for that eventuality by gaining understanding of the poverty and suffering which exist in our world and learning ways to help.

That’s not so very easy either - at least it’s not easy to help those who live far away in very different situations. How can we know what they need? And if we know about a need, how can we see that they get the resources we’re willing to share? Canadian Lutheran World Relief is our way of entering that world. Today we focus on the work of the Lutheran Church in our world. Lutheran World Relief does what we cannot do on our own: reaches out beyond our borders to do large and small projects in the name of Christ on our behalf.

One area that I know a little about is Peru, where I visited some projects in June this year - projects where Canadian Lutheran World Relief is a partner. On the front page of the summer issue of CLWR’s quarterly newsletter called “Partnership” there is a picture of a woman sitting on a steep mountainside in Peru. I saw many women like her and many mountainsides like that. This woman is a farmer. You’d wonder how people grow crops on such steep rocky hillsides, but they do. It’s hard just to stand up on those hillsides, and you certainly can’t use motorized implements of any kind - no tractor or plough or baler or combine can operate on those steep slopes or among those rocks. And the people don’t have funds to buy farm implements anyway. They’re lucky if they have a pair of oxen or a couple of donkeys. Most of the work is done by hand. Everything must be carried down the mountain to market. See the cloth tied around the woman’s shoulder? She carries bundles in the cloth - bundles of firewood, potatoes, cabbages, hay for animal feed. She carries the bundles up the mountain, and then more bundles down the mountain. If a truck goes by, everyone piles in the back. The roads are unbelievably rough and steep. The people are short and stocky and strong - the result of thousands of years of working the ground and leaning into the hills.

I met several farmers in Peru. The one I remember best is Rosita. She is a woman about 40, the mother of five children. She lives in an adobe brick house on the side of a mountain - a beautiful place in the sunshine, as it was when I saw it, but no doubt a hard place to live when the wind blows and the rains come down every day. Rosita is the star farmer in her community. She readily understands what the agriculturists are teaching the local residents: how to diversify their crops, how to build a greenhouse out of local materials, how to grow vegetables at all seasons of the year, how to conserve water, how to make fertilizer in a compost pond, how to keep the soil from blowing away in the wind. Rosita proudly showed us her groves of avocado and mango trees, her small patches of grain and corn and potatoes, her enclosures with guinea pigs and rabbits and chickens. She was recently invited by the project leaders to come to the capital city of Lima and tell some German funders about her farming methods. They were not especially interested in listening to a peasant woman from a remote village in the Andes Mountains. But when one of them challenged her by suggesting these methods don’t make a real difference to her family, Rosita had something important to say. “Because we now have vegetables all year round, my children are better nourished. And because we have extra cash from the produce we sell, my oldest daughter can go back to school. She quit school before, but now we can afford to send her to high school. And you think these methods don‘t make a difference!” The foreigners were impressed.

And Rosita’s story reflects another kind of success: the possibility that women can be equal partners with men. When I asked where Rosita’s husband was, the project leader said, “He’s probably out in the field.” And the leader smiled. “He works for Rosita;” she said, “Rosita’s the boss!” As a matter of fact, there was a large sign posted at the edge of the property. I don’t know if Rosita can read and write, but her children certainly can. This sign may have been printed by one of her children. I took a picture of it and I’ve translated the Spanish words: “Implementation and Action Project for Farm Ecology”, Owner: Rosa Carapo-Guiros (that’s Rosita), Village: Pariacolca, District: Quillo, Altitude 1880 meters (6110 feet), Project Leader: Diaconia (which was the organization I was travelling with), and down in the corner the letters “C.L.W.R.” I was impressed that Canadian Lutheran World Relief is known by people in a remote mountain area of northern Peru, and that it’s making a real difference in the daily lives of those people in terms of nutrition and education.

A certain degree of gender equality is the result of some careful work done by community development workers. Men and women are brought together through awareness meetings. Women need to be part of the development work if it is to succeed. Canadian Lutheran World Relief and their partners work within local community systems to support men and women working together in mutual respect and equality towards a goal of improved living conditions. Here’s a story about a woman in India: Anima Halder. Until 2004, Anima and her husband struggled to meet their essential needs. They were landless and depended on an irregular income from the seasonal work that Anima’s husband obtained.

After two years as the president of a CLWR-supported community group, Anima decided to take advantage of the group’s resources herself. She took out a loan of $69 and started a simple paddy-processing business, which involves preparing the rice for market after it has been harvested. The results were tangible - Anima earns about $58 a month, which is significantly more than the couple’s previous income. With her husband she managed to increase the family’s savings and invest in chickens, with their original brood increasing more than tenfold. “We have a mutual understanding,” says Anima about herself and her husband. “All decisions, including money matters, have to be taken by both of us.”

It’s known in development work that when girls have opportunities for education, even a few years of elementary schooling, their lives are significantly improved. They marry later, have children later, and have fewer children. Their incomes are better and their families are healthier. I think we would say that about the education of girls in our own country, so it makes sense that it is true for girls in the developing world as well.

How do these stories of development fit into the idea of preparation for Christmas? In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus is warning his followers: “…keep alert….keep awake….keep awake….” Keep awake for what? For the ‘Son of Man coming in clouds’. Do we know what that will look like or when it will happen? No, we don’t. We need to be “on the watch”, to be doing the things that Jesus expects of his followers, so that when he comes he will find us faithful. We must not fritter away our time doing irrelevant and useless things; we must be about our Father’s business, taking care of each other and of the needy in the world.

Last weekend we bought some new outdoor Christmas lights - solar lights. They’re more expensive than other kinds of lights. Lorne put them up on the deck and we had great expectations of them. The premise is that the little solar panel absorbs light during the day and stores enough energy to run these lights for six hours a night. They work, but not very well. In fact, they’re downright pathetic; they‘re a big disappointment. I think we need to take them back. They’re a good image for the glitzy images of Christmas that we insist on promoting. Let’s not waste our time preparing for Christmas with pathetically inadequate efforts to celebrate. Let’s focus instead on the true light that lightens the darkness: Jesus Christ himself and his promises to the world. He says to us, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Let’s focus on the real thing.