Tuesday, January 6, 2009
“If you want to be my disciple, empty yourself out, sell what you have, take up your cross and follow me. If you want to save your life you will loose it, but if you loose your life for my sake you will find it.”
~ The Gospel according to Saint Matthew
On a Sunday afternoon in the Spring of 1970 the largest natural disaster in the history of Peru, an earthquake, struck the town of Yungay resulting in 17, 000 deaths in under three minutes; leaving only four hundred or so survivors. One of those survivors was Carmen, who had traveled to Lima on that day with her brothers and her father to watch the World Cup as disaster struck back home killing her sisters and her mother. In the years to come the government of Peru declared the town of Yungay a national cemetery and to this day the land is called campo sancto, the holy place. It would be years before Carmen would return. After completing University in Lima, Carmen worked for the World Bank in Washington; organizing donations to help others throughout Latin America. A decade ago Carmen returned to Yungay, to her family's land, to the campo sancto. In those years Union Biblica de Peru asked if she would be willing to sell her family's land in order that an orphanage for street children may be built. For six years now there has been an orphanage in this place, because of the support of donors and volunteers but most especially because of Carmen who in loosing much of her life, in selling what she had and in taking up her cross built up the Kingdom of God. When I think of the life of Carmen, I think of what it means to follow Jesus, what it means to find the most devastating part of our lives and to live into it, to not be afraid and to make it holy. So I ask, what is the campo sancto of your life? What is the place where darkness and confusion persist, but by the grace of God may be newly transformed into light and life? Is it loneliness, anxiety, a question of gender or sexuality, anger, is it fear? Whatever this place for you may be and wherever your journey may lead may you be given strength and grace by God who has created you, the Son who redeems you and the Spirit who sanctifies and sustains you on this day.
Amen
On a Sunday afternoon in the Spring of 1970 the largest natural disaster in the history of Peru, an earthquake, struck the town of Yungay resulting in 17, 000 deaths in under three minutes; leaving only four hundred or so survivors. One of those survivors was Carmen, who had traveled to Lima on that day with her brothers and her father to watch the World Cup as disaster struck back home killing her sisters and her mother. In the years to come the government of Peru declared the town of Yungay a national cemetery and to this day the land is called campo sancto, the holy place. It would be years before Carmen would return. After completing University in Lima, Carmen worked for the World Bank in Washington; organizing donations to help others throughout Latin America. A decade ago Carmen returned to Yungay, to her family's land, to the campo sancto. In those years Union Biblica de Peru asked if she would be willing to sell her family's land in order that an orphanage for street children may be built. For six years now there has been an orphanage in this place, because of the support of donors and volunteers but most especially because of Carmen who in loosing much of her life, in selling what she had and in taking up her cross built up the Kingdom of God. When I think of the life of Carmen, I think of what it means to follow Jesus, what it means to find the most devastating part of our lives and to live into it, to not be afraid and to make it holy. So I ask, what is the campo sancto of your life? What is the place where darkness and confusion persist, but by the grace of God may be newly transformed into light and life? Is it loneliness, anxiety, a question of gender or sexuality, anger, is it fear? Whatever this place for you may be and wherever your journey may lead may you be given strength and grace by God who has created you, the Son who redeems you and the Spirit who sanctifies and sustains you on this day.
Amen
Selections from a sermon preached on the Second Sunday of Advent; Wesley Foundation, University of South Carolina
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