Called for the Common Good

Isaiah 62:1-5 and 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

No doubt, you’ve seen the pictures.  Most likely, you’ve read or heard the stories.  And certainly, we’ve overheard the estimates as we went about our daily activities.  They are hard to fathom.  They are hard to bear.  They are grueling statistics: 45,000.  50,000.  100,000.  But these aren’t statistics.  They are people.  People with names, faces, families, and histories.  The last estimate that I read was from Pan American Health Organization: 50-100,000 dead. Yet, how does a mind wrap itself around such a tragedy?  How does one keep oneself from growing numb to the images of bulldozers, collapsed buildings, and mass graves? 

Maybe you, like me, heard President Obama’s address.  Maybe you, like me, heard his specific comments to the Haitian people, even though they could not, most of them, hear his words, with the power outages and the desperate race for drinkable water, medicines, and edible food.[1] 

The President told the Haitians that they would not be forsaken.  They would not be forgotten.  That they are a strong and resilient people.  And right away, I opened my bible to this passage from Isaiah.  Because, you see, Isaiah, the prophet tells a beaten and battered people, that although they’ve struggled mightily, no more shall they be called “Forsaken,” and no more shall their land be called “Desolate.”  Instead, the nations shall see Zion’s vindication.  This hurting people shall be no less than a “crown of beauty in the hand of God.”  And the people shall be given a new name, a new identity.  They shall be called “My Delight Is in Her” and God shall rejoice over God’s people.

Isaiah, this ancient prophet, speaks out.  He refuses to keep silent; refuses to rest until the land and its people are set free from their oppression.  Isaiah restores hope to a downtrodden people: a people that had been forced into exile…a remnant of people that had returned to a demolished city, and to a land of ruins.

Tracy Kidder wrote a book about Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard educated doctor and anthropologist who spent many years bringing medicine and healthcare to the people of Haiti.  The book is called Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is based on a Haitian proverb, “deye mon gen mon…” or “beyond the mountains there are mountains.”  Recently, the Easthampton Public Library has encouraged the community to read Mountains Beyond Mountains.  Published in 2003, the book is riveting and gives a first-hand perspective to the poverty and complexity that is in Haiti.  The author questions, “How could a just God permit the great misery [of Haiti]?” The Haitian peasants reply with another proverb, “ Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe.”  It means, “God gives but doesn’t share.”  At first, I thought that this made God sound as if God were a temperamental two-year old refusing to share his toys.  But Doctor Farmer then explains the peasant saying: “God gives us humans everything that we need to flourish, but God’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy [it] up.  That charge was laid upon us.”[2]

Which brings me to our second passage for today from 1 Corinthians.  Paul tries to explain to the good people in the church at Corinth that the same spirit, the same God, has given each one of us certain gifts.  Some of us are given the ability to utter wisdom, others the ability to share knowledge.  Some are given great faith and others gifts of healing.  Still others are given special insight and some the gift of discernment.  The point is not the particular gift.  The point is that we are all gifted.  You, me, the kid down the street, the little old lady in the grocery store, your abrasive cousin, and your timid auntie.  The same Spirit has endowed the people of Haiti with special gifts just as the people of Southampton have been gifted.  But we must share.

In Paul’s church, just as in some churches today, some parishioners were “lording their gifts” over others.  Some were using their gifts and talents for only themselves.  Some were using their gifts primarily to assert their own power and status.  But Paul writes that our gifts have purpose.  He writes, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”   We are called for the common good.  Not just for individual plans and purposes.  Our gifts, skills, and talents come not from ourselves but from God.  And they are not intended for us alone, but are intended for the good of the entire community.

Likewise, in Isaiah, the redemption that will come for the people of Israel, the people who are returning home to broken homes and a war-torn land, is communal—not individual. 

When a couple marries in the church, they do not marry alone.  Most couples, if they have a church service, stand in the presence of witnesses.  The purpose of these folks is not to serve as heavies to make the bride and groom go through with the marriage when they get cold feet.  The purpose of the congregation is not to comment on the bride’s dress, or the minister’s homily, or the groom’s shaking voice.  They are not passive observers or background for the wedding pictures.  They are present as a community to help the couple in times when keeping their vows will be difficult.  They are a reminder that when a couple marries they are joining not simply two individuals but also two groups of relationships.  In a sense, two small villages are getting married to each other and an entire community will be affected by this new relationship.

Isaiah tells a broken community that their land, the land to which they have returned, will be called, “Married.”  It is an odd comparison, to call the land married.  It is odd until we also read, “your builder will marry you.”  Those who rebuild the land will be married or in relationship in a way that involves and affects entire communities.  We are reminded of a web of human connection stretching across nations, across fault-lines of earthquakes, and across human pain and suffering.  Martin Luther King once said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”[3]

So the question for us today is two-fold.  First, what are the unique gifts, talents, and skills that God’s Spirit has given to us?  And, second, are we using them for the common good?  Are we using those gifts in such a way that our relationship with the world and our fellow brothers and sisters is strengthened, rather than diminished?  Are we using our gifts, abilities, and service to draw us toward greater connection, rather than greater disconnection? 

Certainly, financial assistance and material aid are urgently needed to help Haiti through this crisis and to keep the terrible devastation from the earthquake from getting any worse.  But I want to suggest that, in addition to our donations, we can also pledge to learn more about Haiti and its people.  We can learn more about the problems that plague this nation because, in a sense, they are also our problems.  The degree to which we cut ourselves off from the other people of this world is the degree to which we imperil our own souls.  Perhaps we can not go to Haiti to help directly, but we can find ways to celebrate our shared humanity.  We can learn their stories and we can learn where our historical paths have intersected for good or ill.  We can, like witnesses at a wedding ceremony, go beyond mere observation.  We can become participants in the relationship.  We can stand with our brothers and sisters so that they may feel God’s tender touch restoring and renewing them.  We can stress the common good.

Diane Wolkstein is a storyteller who has spent time in Haiti.  She has said that the biggest thing that she learned while there is “the clarity that this was a community and that everybody is responsible for the story.”[4]  She was referring to the practice of Haitian story-telling in general, but her words resonate with our scripture and our faith.

We are all responsible for the story that we share here on earth. And we each have a part in making this story one that God would take delight in hearing.  We all have a stake in how the story will turn out.  So what part will you tell?  How will you tell it?  And will you tell this story for yourself and your immediate family only?