Holy Week Reflection – Cynthia Holder Rich
Read Gradye Parsons’ Essay, “On Becoming Rich Soil”
Read Buddy Monahan’s Essay, “What is Holy Week to me?”
As Holy Week 2013 begins, I have recently returned from a visit to the mission projects of the church I serve in the Dominican Republic. I was grateful to see the projects and to have some small glimpses of the first country in the Caribbean region I’ve been blessed to visit. I was even more grateful and glad to make the acquaintance of a number of Christian leaders in the La Romana area of the country. The strong, gifted, committed disciples and leaders I met were very impressive. The projects are in good hands, and I am glad we are partnering there.
Whenever people, congregations, institutions and organizations in a wealthy country partner in mission with people, congregations, institutions and organizations in a poor country, risks exist on both sides. The money and power differentials make partnership that is akin to Christian brotherhood and sisterhood difficult to form with integrity. It is just too simple to look at the situation and see all the gifts on one side and all the needs on the other. It is equally facile to believe that possessing more material wealth indicates a great level of blessing and favor from God – and, of course, not possessing these indicates a lack of these things. While these types of understandings lack both truth and faith, they have all too often featured in Christian history and narrative, and they continue to intrude at times in Christian ministries today.
In La Romana, Village Church partners with Good Samaritan Hospital. Good Samaritan was founded by the Rev. Jean-Luc Phanord, a true visionary who was gifted with an entrepreneurial spirit and a calling to be in ministry with the poor. The hospital serves as the base for medical ministry in over 50 bateyes, worker camps built by US sugar companies, where medical teams from many US congregations, including ours, see over 15,000 patients each year. Without the visiting medical teams, many of whom Pastor Phanord befriended and recruited, the hospital could not hope to serve so many poor people, which is the target population that the Hospital was founded to help. So clearly, the various partnerships that the hospital has built and that we all work together to maintain and grow are a tangible good. They are very, very good.
AND, they are complex – at times, very, very complex. After all, everyone involved in the work is human, and thus prone to error. Everyone who participates has ideas of how things should proceed. The work is going on in one country and a lot of support comes from another. What does this imply about how decisions are to be made? How should and could we faithfully be in dialogue? And as cross-cultural communication can be so very difficult, how can we in faith and love work toward actual and real understanding? When even nuances in the style of response to questions, the pace of conversation, and the meanings of words can create barriers in understanding, hope for true compassion that leads to the building of community could seem to be in vain. And in those moments when, in our humanity, people on either or both sides lack the will, the energy or the patience to strive toward this needed understanding, it is clear that we will not gain it and we may find ourselves moving in directions that are not faithful.
Vicki Flippin reminds us in Huffington Post that Holy Week is “a time to take stock of our life together–especially our religious institutional life–to prune that which is not healthy or helpful, to root out what is sinful, to return to God’s mission.” The journey to the cross can equip us, then, for the work of mission. We have much to learn and Jesus has much to teach us. If we are called to engage in mission that is good, very good, Jesus can help us take stock, prune, and root out in order to nurture, till, plant, water and grow that which Jesus is calling into being among and within us. The opportunity for serious reflection is a gift of this sacred time.
This Holy Week, I am reflecting on what I saw and experienced on my trip to visit mission projects. I am convicted that we as a congregation, and we as denominations, continue to be called into international mission. And we are called to engage in these in ways that please God and transform communities, moving toward life and health. As we seek to return again and again to the mission to which God has called us, may we find strength for the journey in the cross, and may we share the good news of Easter morning with all who need to hear.
Cynthia Holder Rich is Executive Pastor for Ministry at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, and is director of ecclesio.com.