Hope and Memory in Exile
October 12, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Text: Jeremiah 29:1-14
As I began thinking about the Season of Creation, and that we would culminate with Land Sunday, it seemed that the issues of Promised Land and Exile were the obvious ways to look at land. Brita has shared God’s Word about the Promised Land with us – and this is God’s hope for our relationship with the land: that we will be connected to the land, we will work the land and receive the fruit of the earth and our labor with hearts of gratitude, and then we will return to God a portion of the harvest.
But so often, our relationship to the land is not as God dreams for us: at the beginning of the 21st century, more people lived in urban environments than in rural, and beyond the urbanization of the world, there is in our time the very real issue of displacement. I’ll be honest with you – when I first started to think about the issue of exile, I was thinking about the ancient Hebrew people, and their experience of exile in Babylon during the sixth century B.C. That’s the experience that Jeremiah was writing about, and it was a defining experience in the identity of Israel. Much of the Old Testament was written during or soon after the exile, in response to that experience. But we are living in a time when approximately 26 million people are living as internally displaced persons – people who are in exile within their own country. Twenty-six million people. That is more than the combined populations of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, North and South Dakotas, and the District of Columbia. This doesn’t include those people who are refugees outside their home country – which in 2001 was estimated to be almost 15 millions persons, or the populations of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wyoming.
It won’t surprise you, perhaps, that the largest numbers of these are in the Sudan, where 6 million people have been driven from their homes. Nor will it likely surprise you that one of the other countries with a large number of internally displaced persons is Iraq.
.
But I learned this week when I was meeting with Diego Higuita, Executive Secretary of the Presybterian Church in Colombia, who spent the week in our presbytery and Monday night in our home, that Colombia also has a huge problem with displaced persons. In fact, Colombia is estimated by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to have more internally displaced persons than Iraq, almost 4 million, or 8.6% of its population. In 2008, the rate of displacement in Colombia is increasing. Our presbytery, Winnebago Presbytery has a sister-presbytery relationship with Urabá Presbytery, which is located in northwest Colombia, ann is one of the affected regions.
I was stunned to learn this – now I understand why our Presbyterian brothers and sisters in Urabá Presbytery have invited us to learn about the human rights issues in Colombia. I will be leaving two weeks from tomorrow, and traveling with 5 other women and men from our Presbytery, and Diego Higuita will be with us.
The issues around displacement in Colombia are very complex. Fighting between paramilitary groups and revolutionaries created the displacement issues. But complicating the issues, when the campesinos, or small farmers, were forced off their land, multinational corporations took over the land and created plantations of African palm trees. These are used for palm oil, which accounts for about half of world trade in vegetable oils, and for bio-diesel. So now, in Urabá Presybtery, instead of having the God-dreamed relationship with the land, our brothers and sisters are driven from their land with violence, and the constant threat of random violence, and they do not even benefit from the fruit of the land. Their land is used to grow exports. And if they ever regain the land, African Palms seriously depletes the soil, so it may no longer be usable as farmland.
The Presbyerian News Service interviewed Diego: “In such a situation, ‘it’s hard to be the church,’ he said, noting that he is ‘afraid for my life all the time’”. “We in the Presbyterian Church of Colombia understand ourselves to be in relationship — with God, with the environment and with each other. This sense of dynamic ‘being’ includes all and our general objective as a church is to uplift the human rights of each person.” Despite the challenges of random violence facing them, Presbyterians in Colombia are choosing to respond with nonviolence, living out the way of Jesus .
Some members of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. have chosen to participate as “accompaniers” – North Americans who travel with Colombians and by their presence provide a measure of safety. We have a letter from two of these accompaniers in our current newsletter. They wrote: “…as our host preached one Sunday, ‘la iglesia es la comunidad que celebra la vida’ – ‘the church is the community that celebrates life.’ The people we met with during our visit do not look at land as a chance to rise in power over others. Instead, the vibrant members of the Presbytery of Urabá take earnestly their stewardship of each other, their children, and the beautiful land – with nostalgia for the lands they have had to leave, and with hope for the portions they are still able to inhabit. They see this as their role as a part of God's creation thriving in the midst of, and in spite of, societal plans for acquisition, violence, and domination. Their faith rests firmly in a spontaneous, lively worship which is biblically based. They step out on that faith with nonviolent action, offering encouragement, solidarity, and a sense of place for uprooted campesinos who have suffered horrible violence.”
I chose our reading for today when I was planning to discuss exile from the perspective of the ancient Hebrew people. But perhaps a more apt reading for us, living comfortably in safety, might be Micah 6:6-8, when the prophet asks: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Perhaps those of us who are living comfortably and safely should consider one of our first fruits to be doing justice. Perhaps the challenge facing the church in the U.S. is that we are so comfortable, so safe. For if we are free, and not sensing our deep human connection in God to those who are not free; and if we are safe, and are not aching for those who are not safe, then perhaps our own baptism was forgotten once the water dried. For in baptism we promise to reject evil, to serve God, and we acknowledge that we belong to God. Baptism creates a new identity for us. We belong to God and we are deeply connected to God’s people and God’s creation throughout the world.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” Perhaps in seeking justice for others, we will find God; and even find that as we do justice we ourselves are the plans of God for others to have a future with hope. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Text: Jeremiah 29:1-14
As I began thinking about the Season of Creation, and that we would culminate with Land Sunday, it seemed that the issues of Promised Land and Exile were the obvious ways to look at land. Brita has shared God’s Word about the Promised Land with us – and this is God’s hope for our relationship with the land: that we will be connected to the land, we will work the land and receive the fruit of the earth and our labor with hearts of gratitude, and then we will return to God a portion of the harvest.
But so often, our relationship to the land is not as God dreams for us: at the beginning of the 21st century, more people lived in urban environments than in rural, and beyond the urbanization of the world, there is in our time the very real issue of displacement. I’ll be honest with you – when I first started to think about the issue of exile, I was thinking about the ancient Hebrew people, and their experience of exile in Babylon during the sixth century B.C. That’s the experience that Jeremiah was writing about, and it was a defining experience in the identity of Israel. Much of the Old Testament was written during or soon after the exile, in response to that experience. But we are living in a time when approximately 26 million people are living as internally displaced persons – people who are in exile within their own country. Twenty-six million people. That is more than the combined populations of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, North and South Dakotas, and the District of Columbia. This doesn’t include those people who are refugees outside their home country – which in 2001 was estimated to be almost 15 millions persons, or the populations of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wyoming.
It won’t surprise you, perhaps, that the largest numbers of these are in the Sudan, where 6 million people have been driven from their homes. Nor will it likely surprise you that one of the other countries with a large number of internally displaced persons is Iraq.
.
But I learned this week when I was meeting with Diego Higuita, Executive Secretary of the Presybterian Church in Colombia, who spent the week in our presbytery and Monday night in our home, that Colombia also has a huge problem with displaced persons. In fact, Colombia is estimated by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to have more internally displaced persons than Iraq, almost 4 million, or 8.6% of its population. In 2008, the rate of displacement in Colombia is increasing. Our presbytery, Winnebago Presbytery has a sister-presbytery relationship with Urabá Presbytery, which is located in northwest Colombia, ann is one of the affected regions.
I was stunned to learn this – now I understand why our Presbyterian brothers and sisters in Urabá Presbytery have invited us to learn about the human rights issues in Colombia. I will be leaving two weeks from tomorrow, and traveling with 5 other women and men from our Presbytery, and Diego Higuita will be with us.
The issues around displacement in Colombia are very complex. Fighting between paramilitary groups and revolutionaries created the displacement issues. But complicating the issues, when the campesinos, or small farmers, were forced off their land, multinational corporations took over the land and created plantations of African palm trees. These are used for palm oil, which accounts for about half of world trade in vegetable oils, and for bio-diesel. So now, in Urabá Presybtery, instead of having the God-dreamed relationship with the land, our brothers and sisters are driven from their land with violence, and the constant threat of random violence, and they do not even benefit from the fruit of the land. Their land is used to grow exports. And if they ever regain the land, African Palms seriously depletes the soil, so it may no longer be usable as farmland.
The Presbyerian News Service interviewed Diego: “In such a situation, ‘it’s hard to be the church,’ he said, noting that he is ‘afraid for my life all the time’”. “We in the Presbyterian Church of Colombia understand ourselves to be in relationship — with God, with the environment and with each other. This sense of dynamic ‘being’ includes all and our general objective as a church is to uplift the human rights of each person.” Despite the challenges of random violence facing them, Presbyterians in Colombia are choosing to respond with nonviolence, living out the way of Jesus .
Some members of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. have chosen to participate as “accompaniers” – North Americans who travel with Colombians and by their presence provide a measure of safety. We have a letter from two of these accompaniers in our current newsletter. They wrote: “…as our host preached one Sunday, ‘la iglesia es la comunidad que celebra la vida’ – ‘the church is the community that celebrates life.’ The people we met with during our visit do not look at land as a chance to rise in power over others. Instead, the vibrant members of the Presbytery of Urabá take earnestly their stewardship of each other, their children, and the beautiful land – with nostalgia for the lands they have had to leave, and with hope for the portions they are still able to inhabit. They see this as their role as a part of God's creation thriving in the midst of, and in spite of, societal plans for acquisition, violence, and domination. Their faith rests firmly in a spontaneous, lively worship which is biblically based. They step out on that faith with nonviolent action, offering encouragement, solidarity, and a sense of place for uprooted campesinos who have suffered horrible violence.”
I chose our reading for today when I was planning to discuss exile from the perspective of the ancient Hebrew people. But perhaps a more apt reading for us, living comfortably in safety, might be Micah 6:6-8, when the prophet asks: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Perhaps those of us who are living comfortably and safely should consider one of our first fruits to be doing justice. Perhaps the challenge facing the church in the U.S. is that we are so comfortable, so safe. For if we are free, and not sensing our deep human connection in God to those who are not free; and if we are safe, and are not aching for those who are not safe, then perhaps our own baptism was forgotten once the water dried. For in baptism we promise to reject evil, to serve God, and we acknowledge that we belong to God. Baptism creates a new identity for us. We belong to God and we are deeply connected to God’s people and God’s creation throughout the world.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” Perhaps in seeking justice for others, we will find God; and even find that as we do justice we ourselves are the plans of God for others to have a future with hope. Amen.