Many of you are familiar with the work of Dr. Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners In Health which is based here in Boston. Dr. Farmer has taken the high standards of American health care to some of the poorest and most underserved countries of the world. He began his work in Haiti and it has spread to Latin America, Russia, and Africa. In April of this year, two members of Trinity Church will move to Malawi to lead a new project for Partners In Health. Our prayers will travel with Jon and Jenna Crocker as they begin this work.
Paul Farmer’s story is told in a biography entitled Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It is full of gripping anecdotes, and one of my favorites comes from the early days of Farmer’s medical practice in Haiti. He was treating tuberculosis and wanted to understand the impact of local religion on healthcare. He expected to see a difference in the compliance and recovery rates between patients who believed in modern germ theory and those who believed that they had been bewitched. Farmer was surprised to learn that the cure rates were about the same and that many people believed in both antibiotics and sorcery. He expressed his surprise to a sweet, elderly woman. With great patience, she looked at Farmer and then said in her native Creole, Honey, are you incapable of complexity?
We are confronted with complexity today as we read Luke’s gospel. The lesson we have just heard contains harsh words about wealth. Here we sit in the wealthiest country in the world as people of privilege and advantage. Where are we to go in light of these teachings? Jesus sounds like he is drawing a line between the rich and the poor and offering hope to the poor even as he condemns the rich. And we are here, in his house, warm and well-fed and well-educated, with bank accounts, seeking to be followers of Jesus. Luke’s version of Jesus’ sermon is the harshest of the gospel accounts, yet Luke’s gospel is also the most inclusive of all classes and groups. What are we to make of this disparity? In my imagination, I see Luke sitting at a table, writing his gospel by candlelight. He raises his head, and peering over the manuscript, he says to us, Reader, are you incapable of complexity?
In the world of Jesus and his disciples, being poor was not only miserable, it was also considered dishonorable. The poor were unable to maintain a position of respect in society. In the ancient world, the ability to earn a living depended upon personal relationships, so loosing one’s honor quickly led to poverty. Jesus spoke directly to the poor and gave them back their honor and dignity. He promised them a place of honor in God’s Kingdom, even as the world was excluding them. As for the rest of us, we are left in an uncomfortable place of dislocation in this text.
I want to suggest that we should just BE in this place and not try to ignore it or hide from it. I believe that those of us with material wealth are invited by God into a holy discomfort. Even as we are blessed with abundance, we are prodded to share it. We have so much, while most of the world has so little. Our faith in God should heighten our awareness of this. It is the pebble in our shoe, the burr under our saddle. So I cannot offer you a hiding place from this gospel today. But I can bless the holy discomfort that we all feel and say that if we will embrace it, God will lead us. God will lead us toward the right relationship between our material wealth and needs of the world. This is the biblical notion of righteousness which is God’s high standard. Sometimes righteousness feels full of complexity.
I offer you something else today that expands our attention from our personal dilemma to the larger conversation in our Church and the world about wealth and poverty. I speak of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals were adopted by the United Nations in 2000 and aim to reduce extreme poverty globally by 2015. The emphasis is placed on partnerships because no one nation or group can accomplish this work alone. To date, 190 nations have adopted the goals. In the summer of 2006, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church adopted the Millennium Development Goals as our top mission priority.
Have you heard them? Here are the 8 goals:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
These are the Millennium Development Goals. While global poverty is full of complexity, the simplicity of some of these goals is heartbreaking. Clean water should be a given. A mosquito net over a crib can save a child’s life. But even these simple strategies are beyond the reach of much of the world. I offer you these goals for your prayer and reflection. I also invite you to participate in our education and dialogue about them here at Trinity Church. You will be hearing about a special Wednesday night lecture series in Lent that will stir our hearts and stimulate our thinking. The retired Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold will be with us in March. He comes to us immediately after his return from an international conference in South Africa. You may be led in your own prayer life to support the development goals in other ways. Prayer is always the starting point.
Jesus traveled from village to village with his disciples and the crowds came out to hear him and to touch him. He offered them healing and hope. Many were poor and physically ill, while others were wealthy and spiritually destitute. They all lived in the shadow of an empire where violence was common. They existed in an economy of growing disparity between the rich and the poor. The poor were forced off their land and migrated to cities where they lived in desperation. Their village safety net was gone. The wealthy lived in fear of the political instability all around them. They felt powerless despite their wealth. Jesus got into boats and he sat down at tables of the rich and the poor and the saints and the sinners. At every turn he spoke about the Kingdom of God, a different kind of empire where all people feast at God’s table. In God’s Kingdom, all the barriers between people are gone and all people are honored regardless of their health, their wealth, and the world’s assigned value. In the Kingdom of God, we do not pick our dining partners. All creation shares in God’s abundance. It is a radical idea, and by the time Luke was writing his gospel and telling us the story, Jesus and his disciples had been persecuted for it. It is all there if you read between the lines. But the vision itself endures, just as Christ endures, and calls to us today.
In the Kingdom of God, futility and despair have no place. In the Kingdom of God, there is abundant hope and empowerment. It seems far away, but we have 8 goals to guide us. Our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori has said,
The Millennium Development Goals give us an image, an icon or a lens for how we can build the reign of God in our own day.
These internationally acclaimed goals are concrete actions for people around the world to address poverty and suffering. For those of us in the Church who bear the holy discomfort of today’s gospel, the goals offer faithful steps toward shared abundance.
May the God of hope bless us and all the nations of the world as we work to bring an end to poverty and suffering.
May Jesus Christ our beloved companion bless us in our discomfort, and lead us to generosity in the midst of our abundance.
May the Holy Spirit inspire us to seek the Kingdom of God everyday, in our time and in the age to come.
AMEN. | 
