Years ago, friends of mine went on a mission trip to Guatemala, in Central America.
The purpose of the trip was to introduce students to the life of Christians were living in that Central American country. As they drove along, they found themselves in the midst of field after field of strawberries, and clusters of farm hands were picking them, most of them for the U.S. market. One of my friends, looking at the laborers picking the big red clusters of strawberries growing on the plants remarked, “Wow, I bet they just love to bite into a fresh berry every once in awhile while they’re working.” The response from the trip guide was swift. “If they did that, they would be beaten, and their wages, which are about 16 cents/hour, would be docked for the week.” The guide went on to share how difficult life was as a farm laborer in that country; how the laborers lived in shacks owned by the landowner, how their low wages made it impossible to keep up with their rent plus food and other necessities of life, and that many were in such deep debt that their lives were reduced to servitude at the whim of the landowner. The shocked mission group were quick to share what they learned upon their return. I told this story during a Bible Class at the congregation I served years ago. One of the participants became quite agitated. “Well what are we supposed to do about that? There’s not a lot I can do about their lot in life.“ One of the other attendees suggested maybe there was something to do; to not buy strawberries from Guatemala, for example, or to protest the laborer’s lot by writing to the grocery store, asking them not to purchase from growers who abused their workers in such a way. The reply, if anything, made the participant even angrier: “So now, when I buy strawberries, I need to look at the package to see where they come from?!” she said incredulously. “And to try to tell the grocery store how to run their business?” What does it mean to care? We have a book study group at Grace Lutheran in Waynesboro that is reading The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Among the many stories told in the book is one of a couple who bought their first house. Having been invited by an aggressive mortgage lender in the area in the early 2000s to refinance in order to “get a better deal,” they found, a few months after the lender had signed them into a subprime mortgage, that their “deal” charged hidden fees amounting to 12% of the loan, and had a sliding loan rate that began far below their current rate, but quickly slid up to rates much higher than what they had been paying. The loan was designed not to help the homeowner, but to earn the lender tens of thousands of dollars more for each subprime loan they sold, and then resold to other companies that would take an addition cut of profit from the homeowner. The salesperson received a substantial kickback for every subprime loan she sold. Even though the couple qualified for a much safer loan with a rate that would have actually saved them money, the salesperson made a lot of extra money by selling the harmful loan. The book goes on: “Then there was the God part.” The couple had shared that they wanted to refinance in order to free up money for their children’s Christian schooling. “She had me figured out,” the wife telling the story said. The sales rep began to talk about her Christian faith, and looking around the office, there were crosses and a picture of Jesus in the office. “I know that God must have sent you to us,” the loan agent said. So the couple, trusting this “Christian woman,” signed the papers. It took a years-long lawsuit — involving over 1,300 others who had been sold this same type of loan — to sort things out. There are numerous stories that Jesus tells, and people Jesus interacted with, that talk about how we care as followers of Christ. A blind beggar shouts by the side of the road, and the people try to shut him up when Jesus is walking past. And Jesus stops. A woman jostles the crowd she is a part of to come close enough to touch even the cloak that Jesus wore, and is healed. When Jesus stops, the woman trembles and steps forward “to tell the whole truth” about herself. The disciples wondered why in the world Jesus is asking who touched him, especially since everyone was closing in around Jesus. I think an important part of why Jesus asks is so that “the whole truth” about this invisible woman could be told. So that we care. At the end of our last book study, there were a few members who expressed being overwhelmed by this world we live in. There is so much information, there are so many new stories about this world and this nation that we are having to reckon with. What does it mean to care in such a potentially overwhelming time? We concluded that there are some things we can’t do much about. There is sometimes so much conflicting information that it’s hard to sort things out. In such cases it is tempting to “just live my life;” to tighten the circle of care to those we love, or to those we know. Of course, Jesus never taught his disciples to do that. So we talked about caring where we live. The community you and I are a part of. A group from Grace Lutheran and Christ Tabernacle met with Waynesboro police a few weeks ago. Among a full range of conversation, about race, policing, school, training, body cameras and many other topics, came a surprising fact from the police: one of the primary concerns of the police right now is mental health. You may have also read recently about the fact that Virginia’s mental health facilities are overworked, understaffed, and not taking new clients. What can you and I do about this? What does it mean to care? There don’t appear to be simple answers. I have no simple list of strawberry origin checking, newspaper reading, or specific do’s and don’ts for mental health care (I will say that no one should do harm to another by using Jesus as a tool for selfish gain!). What I do know is that when the world closed in on Jesus, he stopped to find out the truth of those who came by and into his life. And he cared. And calls us to do the same.
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AuthorPastor Paul came to Grace to serve as our Pastor in October 2012. After a first career in product and graphic design, he was ordained in 1993, and has served as a parish pastor in Virginia and South Carolina. He is married to Jill and they have two daughters, one at Roanoke College and one at James Madison University. Archives
December 2021
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