Harper's Guest
Sermon
Harper McConnell
September 16, 2007
Good Morning! I am happy to be
here with you all this morning and I am grateful to have the
opportunity to talk here in my hometown and to share a little
about my life in Congo. Your support has been an incredible
blessing and I cannot thank you enough for coming behind me
with enthusiasm-it is impossible to do the work there without
support from home-thank you for enabling me to be in Congo.
For those of you who don’t know
I am living and working in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
and working with an organization called HEAL Africa- HA is
partially supported by Christ Presbyterian Church, a church I
attended in Minneapolis and their goal is to continually have
a person on the ground-I am the first person they sent and I
have been there a little over a year now and plan to stay
until next summer. HEAL Africa is a Congolese organization
that operates in two eastern provinces of Congo with the base
in Goma. We have a hospital in Goma that specializes in
orthopedic surgery and fistula repair and then we operate
various programs addressing issues of community health, HIV
AIDS education and support, child sponsorship, and various
income generation grants and financial training throughout all
the surrounding rural areas.
I arrived in Kansas on Tuesday
and spend a few days catching up on jetlag-I had quite a
travel. Goma is right on the border of Rwanda and so I fly
into Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. On the day of my
departure I drove to the border, and by this time I have
become a Congolese driver; driving on the right-hand side of
the car on the right side of the road, dodging the potholes
and lava rock, remnants of a 2002 volcano explosion, not to
mention dodging the people who crowd the side of the streets,
often carrying large loads on their heads, hearing music burst
loudly from the stores, waving to the traffic police who are
trying to stop me, pretending I just think they are just being
nice and waving at me. Semi-structured chaos is good way to
describe Goma, a city of about ½ million people in probably
the land area a little smaller than the size of Manhattan. I
cross the border, and by this time I have become good friends
with the border control people since I am usually the one who
goes to the border to pick up visitors to HEAL Africa and they
like that I joke with them in Swahili, so they let me pass
without checking my luggage. I catch a bus to Kigali which is
about a 4 hour drive; now by bus I mean glorified vans where
you are jammed in with about 20 people-4 or 5 to a row with
luggage spilling everywhere. The cost of taking a bus is $5 as
opposed to $100 to take a taxi, so I prefer to save the $95.
Music is blaring and there is a constant chatter of Swahili,
French, and Kenyarwanda. The drive through the rolling
mountains of Rwanda is beautiful though-and compared with the
roads in Congo-the road to Kigali seems like a highway
although it is just a small tarred road winding through the
mountains. There is never a stretch of road where you don’t
see someone walking on the side-kids carrying water, women
carrying firewood, people walking to work, to and from the
market- for 4 straight hours you see people walking. When you
reach Kigali you find a city that is quite clean, safe, and
organized with business thriving; again quite opposite to
Congo. The airport is very small and there is not the hustle
and bustle of most airports we are used to. You can check in,
go through passport control, and walk to the gate all within
10 minutes. From the airport I caught a flight to Ethiopia and
then connected with a flight that took me straight from
Ethiopia to Washington DC. As a side note I wouldn’t recommend
the non-stop Africa-America flight-it is a quite miserable
18-20 hours-and if you are not too fond of your seatmate-you
are in trouble.
I landed in DC and it has been
about 8 months since I have been in America and I felt like
someone should have been following me with a video camera
because the scenes would have been perfect for a movie. I
stepped into the terminal and didn’t know where to go first-do
I go buy Starbucks, there’s Dunkin Doughnuts over there, but a
place I can go buy salads over there, and a book store!
Thankfully I had about a 5 hour layover so I could fit most of
those things in. The first thing I did though was try to
change my ticket so I could get an earlier flight out of DC.
The stereotypical, stressed airline counter employee assisted
me: her classic line in response to my question about a flight
price that was only good on Tuesdays: “ well, unless you can
change the day to Tuesday, otherwise there is nothing.” I had
to go through security again and I was special checked: a
woman took my ticket and then told me to follow her: she began
to quickly walk through the maze of people and lines and I
started to lose her, I began walking faster and before I know
it I am knocking out small children with my huge backpacking
backpack I am wearing trying to catch up with this lady. I
reach the special check station, put my bags through the x-ray
machine and then I thought I was walking through a metal
detector, but they told me to stop in the middle and then all
of the sudden I feel this massive wind blowing on me from all
sides. I apparently went through the new puffer machine that
tests for explosive materials. Then, the security went through
every piece of my belongings, flipping through books, and
wiping down everything with a special coated paper that was
then put in to a tester. I had to bite my lip to keep from
laughing because of the mere contrast of situations I was
suddenly thrust into after 8 months in the Congo and 20 fairly
incoherent hours on a plane.
My grandparents are here
visiting now and it is always our tradition to go around the
dinner table and ask one question that everyone has to take
turns answering. 2 nights ago my grandma posed the question:
“what do you think is the biggest problem the world is facing
today?” Needless to say that conversation took about 3 hours
focusing on topics such as health, media, technology,
religion, the environment, education, etc. We McConnells tend
to keep it light at the dinner table, you know! My answer to
the question though was the incredibly vast difference and
disparity in living conditions and wealth between the third
world and the developed world. When I stepped out of the
airport I couldn’t believe how my perception on wealth
changed, even from when I visited the States last December. I
felt as if I had stepped into Pleasantville. I couldn’t
believe the size of the roads, the nice cars driving by, the
beautiful buildings and restaurants, the perfectly planned
neighborhoods, the overwhelming choices in the grocery store.
It is uncanny feeling to see the country you lived in for 22
years in a completely different manner-I almost felt like I
was an immigrant viewing America for the first time and
believing I had entered into the American dream.
It’s important to highlight the
contrast so I will try to paint a picture of Goma and of
Congo. As I said before, Goma is best described as
semi-structured chaos. To the foreigner it may initially
appear as complete and utter chaos with people riding on the
back of motorcycles with live goats, yelling in the streets
over prices, people scrambling across the streets with
oncoming traffic, music blaring from all directions, and a sea
of bright colored Congolese fabric worn by most. Goma is in
North Kivu province which is the province that has been the
most affected by the war and where violence continues to rage.
Goma saw a massive influx of refugees in the nineties during
the Rwandan genocide and Rwanda continues to fight out its
proxy-war in the province. North Kivu province was also the
battle field during the civil war(which actually involved all
bordering countries) which lasted from 1998-2003 and arguably
still continues to this day. In addition, Goma sits at the
base of an active volcano which exploded in 2002, wiping out
half the city and leaving with lava rock as soil.
The Democratic Republic of Congo
on a whole has 55 million people and is the size of the US
east of the Mississippi River. It is incredibly loaded with
resources: copper, gold, diamonds, tungsten, coltan, you name
it and the Congo has it. Yet, the people don’t benefit from
the natural wealth. It is all mined by western companies or
stolen by neighboring countries. The health statistics are
mortifying: the infant mortality rate is 126 infants for every
1000 born and the under 5 mortality rate is 213 for every 1000
children. Life expectancy for men is 46 and 51 for women. Rape
has been used extensively as a weapon of war in order to
cripple communities. It most often happens in the field when
the women are at work. By instilling fear and creating
insecurity different rebel groups were able to seriously
debilitate communities as women would not go to the field for
fear of being raped or killed, therefore leading to food
shortages and leaving many fields uncultivated.
These are the conditions that
the Congolese people live in. It is a survival mentality and
this mentality permeates through the streets, the culture, and
through everyday actions. You see it in the fights that break
out over bargaining for prices, you see it in the children who
knock each other out for a piece of leftover bread, you see it
in the amount of food people can eat at one sitting, you see
it in the habits of spending money-there is very little
concept of savings, you see it in the betrayal of friends to
get a step up on one another.
HEAL Africa operates in this
context, and as a Christian organization, tries to chip away
at these colossal problems through Christ’s mandate to love
God and love your neighbor. The goal of HEAL Africa is to see
societies transformed from within and to be the vehicle that
enables communities to do so. They take a holistic approach to
development realizing that you can’t treat the patient without
attempting to solve the problem which caused them to be a
patient in the first place. For example, HEAL Africa is the
only hospital in eastern Congo which specializes in fistula
repair surgery. Fistula is a tear in the vaginal wall which
occurs either from brutal rape or prolonged child birth
causing the woman to constantly leak urine and in the worst
cases, feces as well. On any given day there are about 100-120
women waiting or recovering from fistula surgery. All these
women come from the rural areas and are brought to HEAL Africa
through a network of counselors HEAL Africa has established
throughout these communities. These counselors are members of
the communities who seek out women who have been sexually
abused as quite often women with fistula will hide their
condition as it is considered very shameful. The women are
then brought to Goma for treatment and while they wait they
learn to read and write, to sew, to weave, receive financial
training, and upon their return home they receive an income
generation grant which will enable them to be accepted back
into the community as they will be going home with a new skill
and a way to make money. In addition to equipping the women
who receive treatment, HEAL Africa is steadily trying to
change the damaging mentality surrounding the role of women
and to encourage communities to hold perpetrators of the law,
including rapists, accountable for their actions. The
Constitution of Congo has been in place for over two years
now, but justice and practice of the law is non-existent. HEAL
Africa is in the process of training committees of church
leaders, representing both Christian and Muslim faiths, on the
constitution, human rights, and the punishment for abridging
the law so that they can educate their congregations and begin
to take grassroots actions in terms of enforcing the law. If
HEAL Africa had just stopped at surgery and not addressed the
attitudes towards women, the lack of education about the law
and its punishment, and not addressed the transition of the
women back into their communities, then we would not be much
closer to solving the problem.
This is just one example in the
dozen or so programs that HEAL Africa has. Trying to formulate
a sermon on my last year in the Congo has proved to be quite
difficult as I very well could talk for days. But, what I
wanted to at least accomplish was to try to show the contrast
between the world we live in and the world I have been in for
the past year, to talk a little about the work of HEAL
Africa, and to address what responsibility we as Christians
have to fulfill. I want to read a passage from Matthew
25:31-45:
When the Son of Man comes in his
glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne
in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before
him, and he will separate the people one from another as a
shepard separates sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep
on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say
to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my
Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you
since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave
me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something
to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed
clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after
me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Then the
righteous will answer him, Lord when did we see you hungry and
feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did
we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes
and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go
to visit you? The King will rely, I tell you the truth,
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of
mine, you did for me.”
Then he will say to those on his
left, Depart from me, you who are cursed in to the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry
and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me
nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me
in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and
in prison and you did not look after me.” They also will
answer him, “Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a
stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not
help you? He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you
did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for
me.”
In the very first part of the
passage Jesus says, “All the nations will be gathered and I
will separate the sheep from the goats.” He then goes on to
talk about one who is hungry or who thirsty or who is sick,
etc. He doesn’t limit our brothers to those who share the same
national borders with us. God does not have borders. Borders
are completely arbitrary to God. What matters is that if we
know that our brothers and sisters in Christ are suffering and
we do nothing to help, then we are damning ourselves. If we
say, well, I don’t know if my money or my help is actually
going to do anything or go to the right place and do nothing
instead of putting the time and research in to find out, then
we are those people in the second part of the passage Jesus is
talking about. Here in the States, it is quite easy to have
faith. We go to church on Sunday and then go about our week
worrying about trifle things that really don’t make too much
of a difference in our lives, we try to be good, nice people
because that is what is acceptable in our society, and then we
return to church the next Sunday, perhaps hear something
inspiring from the pulpit and then continue on with our lives
throughout the week, living in our relative comfort. Now, I by
no means wish to sounds preachy because I am just as guilty as
the next person, but God has challenged me in the last year
and thrown reality in my face-saying-well I am glad you are
worried about your appearance and how people perceive your
intelligence, and how fast you were able to run last week, but
here I have children who are dying and no one in your country
seems to be caring about it, so are you going to help me or
not?
James 2:14-24 draws the
contrast between faith and faith accompanied with deeds:
What good is it my brothers if a
man claims to have faith, but has no deeds? Can such faith
save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and
daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go I wish you well;
keep warm and well-fed,” but does nothing about his physical
needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if
it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Show me your faith
without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You
believe that there in one God. Good! Even the demons believe
that-and shudder. You foolish man, do you want evidence that
faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham
considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son
Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions
were working together and his faith was made complete by what
he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham
believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” and
he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified
by what he does and not by faith alone.
So, what will we do with the
knowledge that we are living as the most privileged people on
this planet? What will we do with the knowledge that 20% of
the children under age 5 in Congo die? What will we do with
the knowledge that we have brothers and sisters in Christ who
are suffering for their faith? What will we do with the
knowledge that because we live in excess, others live in want?
But, Jesus tells us that in this world we are like him, that
we are to God the aroma of Christ, we are a letter from
Christ, written not with ink, but with the spirit on the
tablets of human hearts.
It is quite overwhelming to
think about practically where to start, and as we are all
parts of the body of Christ, we all have different functions,
and not all of us are called to serve in Africa or to give to
organization in Africa. But, too often the excuse of I don’t
know where to start hinders any action at all. I will just
throw out a few possibilities just to get some wheels
turnings, and these opportunities are not limited to Congo.
- Are you a doctor? Consider a
trip to a third world country not just to treat patients, but
train local doctors so that they can do their job better. Or
commit to funding doctor’s salary. Round up medical textbooks
that could be used for continuing education.
-Are you a stay at home mom?
Learn more about a specific area of the world you are
interested in and start a discussion group with some of your
friends. Encourage your kids to find out more about other
areas of the world. Fundraise money to pay for birthing kits.
-Are you a lawyer? HEAL Africa
along with several other organizations are going to bring a
class action suit against the government of Congo for not
protecting its citizens. Offer your legal expertise, volunteer
your time to help start the suit.
-Are you a teacher? Have your
students pick a third world country to do a report on. Have a
book drive to collect books to send to schools which operate
with no text books. Volunteer with a trip to provide trainings
on teaching methods. I am starting a study abroad program for
American students to come and take a class in Goma with
Congolese students, you can offer me advice on that!
-Are you a student? Do you know
that $25/month can pay for the university fees of a Congolese
student? Arrange debates surrounding issues in the third
world. Raise awareness among other students regarding issues
you are passionate about.
-Are you a musician, artist, or
filmmaker? I have great friends who have a Congolese music,
art, and film organization, but have a lack of quality
equipment and recording devices.
-Are you a politician or
politically active? Do you know that the USAID budget for
Rwanda was $54.68 million in 2006 while the budget for Congo
was $39.58 million? Rwanda is smaller than North Kivu
province, one of the 9 Congolese provinces. Where are our tax
dollars which are allocated to USAID going and why?
-Are you in business or working
in corporate? Where is your company operating internationally
and are they being socially responsible in their policies? How
are you going to hold your company accountable for good
business practices in third world countries?
-Are you a journalist? What type
of news are you publishing? Are you looking for the stories
people want to hear or are you going after the truth, even if
it means putting your job in jeopardy? What type of
information are you bringing to the public?
-As Christians? Do we really act
as if we have brothers and sisters in Christ in the Congo?
I am proud to be a part of
church who steps up to the challenge of demanding a faith that
is accompanied by deeds. I have been blown away by the
generosity of so many members of this congregation. The
donations from First Pres have enabled me to start a school at
the hospital and to hire a teacher, to pay the salary of two
sewing teachers for the women at the hospital, to send women
home with income generation grants, and to be able to help
those in desperate need of assistance due to tragic
emergencies. I am blessed to be the bearer of these blessings.
I get to see Jesus work in the lives of so many people and to
see how one person felt moved by Jesus to donate and then to
see the actual effects that has on a person’s life in the
Congo. Not many people have the opportunity to see these
direct blessings. So, I am here on behalf of HEAL Africa staff
and patients, and they told me to say this a thousand times,
to say thank you for being compelled by Christ’s love, to say
thank you for remembering your brothers and sisters in the
Congo, and to say thank you for being the face of Christ to
them.
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