“Well Done is Better than Well Said” From Historic Trinity Lutheran Church—DetroitSunday, 21 June 2009

Beauty for the soul is as much a gift as is bread for the poor. My sermon on Sunday, encouraging Christians to love actively in responding to global hunger, was preached in one of the nation’s most astounding masterpieces of church architecture. God’s gifts lie astride any false divides of aestheticism and activism. What’s common is that love takes on tangible expression within the world—for the sake of the life of the world.

Here’s a summary of my remarks:

“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue
but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

I believe the message for us here revolves around the writer’s observation that the highest truth is not found in documents or statements, because too often it’s the case that after all is said and done, more is said than is done.

Tomoji Tanabe died this past Friday in Japan. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, he was the world’s oldest man at 113 years. His secret was seafood in case you’re wondering. I don’t know if you plan or even desire to live that long, but try this with me: in your mind, calculate your age. Got it? Now, if you’re older than 42 years old, you don’t have to raise your hand, because in numerous places where LWR works, you’re already dead, you have lived longer than the average person.

We have no idea how fortunate we are, even here in southeastern Michigan, the U.S. epicenter of the global financial crisis. The Spirit moves us through the words of today’s reading from 1 John. We are called and compelled to do something, to move beyond talking about the problem to taking action.

God’s love is not an abstract, pie-in-the-sky, feel-good emotion. No, it’s much more dramatic than that, much more concrete. Picture the most grotesque human suffering imaginable. This love doesn’t run or retreat from it, but gets involved. “What wondrous love is this” that takes down-to-earth action for my sake, for your sake and for the sake of all who suffer.

This love in action can be documented: Love, born in a barn in backwater Bethlehem. Love, breathing for us our poisoned air and drinking for us our deep despair (cf. Martin Franzmann). Love, bleeding for us on a cross of sacrifice so that others might live. Love, buried, but bursting to life again so that we might dare to get involved in places of high mortality; the love of Jesus gives more than 113 years of life. It is a living statement of abundant, full, humane, just, overflowing, everlasting life.

John and the Rev. Dr. David Eberhard,
Pastor of the Cathedral Ministries of Historic Trinity

The Long Road Ahead for Sri Lankans

Displaced Sri Lankan women make nutrition patties
for children in an LWR-supported community kitchen.

News reports proclaim that the fighting between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has ended. But for thousands of Sri Lankans who remain displaced—far away from home and family—the story does not end there.

They are still in dire need of our help. Many continue to live in overcrowded camps where there is not enough food or water. Children remain separated from their parents. People are weary and sick and wondering when this nightmare will end.

Our Sri Lanka Country Program Manager, K. Thampu, works with our partners on the ground to provide for the needs of people who must, for now, call a displacement camp their home. I pray you’ll read her words and let your hearts be moved to help.

Dear John,

After visiting the camps, I write to urge our supporters to continue helping the displaced people in Sri Lanka.

With the gifts we’ve received so far we’ve been able to feed thousands of people in the camps. We try to reach as many people as possible, providing food and water to newly arrived people and through community kitchens where many come to eat. But our supply of food is running low. If we do not act soon, our supplies will run out and people will begin to starve.

People desperately need water, for drinking and for washing. Lack of water has led to sanitation problems, causing the rapid spread of diseases like diarrhea and hepatitis. We are seeing more cases of these diseases and people are beginning to die from them.

I met one set of parents in particular whose story deeply touched my heart. Their daughter was very sick, so they took her to the small medical center at the camp. But the staff at the center did not speak Tamil, so the family could not understand the prescriptions or the treatment instructions and their child continued to worsen. The next closest medical facility was about 5 kilometers away. They managed to get on a bus going toward the hospital but unfortunately their daughter died just after arriving there.

My heart aches for this family, and for the many children in the camps who don’t have families to look after them. They are hungry and there is no one to feed them. They are ill and there is no one to care for them.

There is so much our supporters can do to help. Working with partners on the ground we can care for the people in the camps. We can ease the suffering of many. We can save lives.

I pray that many are moved to help the people of Sri Lanka during this difficult time and I give thanks for those who already contributed. Your kindness shows tremendous respect for the dignity of your brothers and sisters.

In thanks,

K. Thampu
LWR Country Program Manager
Sri Lanka


I urge you to make a contribution to the Sri Lanka Crisis fund. Your gift will save lives.

Thank you for your support of Lutheran World Relief and for the people of Sri Lanka.

Never Content

It’s that season, the season of caps and gowns and graduates eagerly anticipating the next phase of their lives. I’ve been honored to speak at more than one graduation ceremony this year, and each one is moving in its own unique way. I thank God for the blessing of sharing such an important moment, the beginning of a new journey, with these students and their families. When I spoke with the graduates of Concordia University Texas a few weeks ago, on May 9, I shared a few words of discontent:

“Never Content”

On this Mother’s Day weekend we take sober and somber note that nearly 10 million children under 5 die each year from causes related to poverty, like measles, diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria; diseases which are fully beatable and treatable; diseases which we can prevent; diseases which do indeed prevent the hopes of proud mothers from becoming reality; diseases which prevent families from ever seeing fabulous graduations like we are experiencing today; young lives, over before they really begin. That's 27,000 a day—in Texas, that would mean a high school football stadium full of young children dying every day, 38 a minute, on average, nearly 500 now dead while I’m talking this morning.
On the way over here this morning, my hospitable driver, your president, Dr. Tom Cedel, a man with an unceasing discontent for mediocrity, proudly told me of the 1700 students from this institution who volunteered this year to make a difference here in this world. Congratulations, graduates! We need your spirit, young people with plenty of energy who will not accept the irrationality of millions of needless, senseless deaths every year.
Martin Luther King, Jr. captured well your spirit when he said: “Deeply woven into the fiber of our tradition is the conviction that all people are made in the image of God. If we accept this, we cannot be content to see people hungry or suffering.”

“You Must Go”

On May 22, I had the honor of speaking to the graduates of Concordia Theological Seminary at Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’d like to share with you a few of the remarks that I shared with these remarkable men and women. Like these seminary grads, each one of us has a call, and a responsibility, to go into the world and make a difference. The way we do that will, of course, be different for each of us depending on our own unique talent and vocation – but into the world we must go.

It’s a well known fact—and sometimes an excuse used by those who “drop out”—that the world’s wealthiest man never completed his college education at Harvard. But not finishing college was not Bill Gates’ biggest unfinished business, according to him.

“I do have one big regret,” the Microsoft man has remarked. “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world, the appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemn millions to lives of despair.”

The Gates Foundation is now making a huge difference. And at LWR we work with them.

But we desire to work more with you, also—with the church. Because you posses something unique: You go into the world—as women and men, splashed in the strong name of the Three-Person God, therefore, the transcendent dignity of every human person is not a question for you. People living in oppression need your theology-on-the-go, and your theology, in order not to become docetic, needs them.

Even as you walk across this center stage, you walk out into a world that’s more like the world the founder of this seminary found than you may at first realize. When he arrived at the village of Fort Wayne 150 years ago, Wilhelm Sihler found a place that was “primitive and life expectancy was short.”

You are going into a world of immense suffering; a world with H1N1; a world with an economy that, economic experts say, … sucks; a world, where, as the prophet Isaiah says: “Justice is turned back, righteousness stands at a distance, and truth stumbles in the public square” (Isaiah 59:14).

But, there’s something about this world that’s non-negotiable for church-workers like yourselves according to the founder of this venerable institution: Into such a world, “you must go!”

Desperation in Sri Lanka

IDP tents with up to 40 people per tent.

Friends,

Perhaps you’ve seen it on the news, or maybe not: thousands killed and displaced as a result of the on-going fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

It is a scene of graphic violence and human suffering. Our Sri Lankan staff is working with partners on the ground to provide desperately needed food and water to the families who have been driven from their homes and into government camps.

The recent news of attacks on government camps (ironically called “safe zones”) makes the following report from our Sri Lankan staffer, K. (Nalee) Thampu, all the more timely.

Read Nalee’s words and let your hearts be moved to act on behalf of the people of Sri Lanka.

Words cannot accurately describe the suffering of the people of Sri Lanka. The technical term for these huddled masses, who now reside in crowded government camps, is internally displaced persons, or IDPs. What I saw going into the camps to deliver food were families whose lives have been severely interrupted—traumatized—by violence, terror, and separation.

A few days ago we visited an IDP camp in Vavuniya, a government controlled city about 10 miles from the front lines of violence. We went there to distribute 850 food packets with our local partners. People traveled for weeks to get to the camp and had little access to food along the way. In the camps the only food available is being supplied by the local organizations, like our partners, with the help of volunteers from surrounding villages.

When we arrived there were many men waiting for food. The men are the ones tasked with providing food for their families, so there they stood—hundreds of them—their eyes imploring us to hand out the parcels. I could not wait to get the food that we had into their hands so that they could share it with their wives and children. The distribution was a bit chaotic with so many hands outstretched in need of food. The one thing that haunts me about this day is that after all the food was distributed we met a little boy who had gotten lost in the throngs of people who showed up. He was separated from his family and he was hungry. He asked if we had just one more food package and it broke my heart to tell him that there was no more.

On that same trip, we had the occasion to speak with a social worker working with LWR’s local partner. She spends her time talking with IDPs and trying to provide some comfort to them.

Ms. Vijaya told us about a woman who became separated from her baby amidst the chaos. The woman and her family had fled their homes and were staying on the beach when, without warning, that beach came under attack. The woman and her husband rushed to gather up their children and what few belongings they could carry. Almost immediately the husband and wife were separated. When they met back up in the government safe zone both were horrified to find that their eight month-old baby had somehow been left behind, both parents assuming the other had him.

A lost child is any parent’s worst nightmare but in this situation—with so much violence and very little order—the loss is tragic. The woman is understandably inconsolable and cannot eat or drink. She just waits for news of her lost baby. Ms. Vijaya is trying to help her cope with her anxiety.

It is important for LWR’s supporters to know that their donations are helping the people of Sri Lanka. We are able to get into the camps and distribute food and other desperately needed items. The thing that strikes at my heart is that for every person we help there are many more who we have not yet reached. There are many more children like the boy who stood hungry with no one to care for him. There are many more families in need of food. There are many more parents who wait in desperation for news of their lost children.

I appeal to you, in the U.S. to be as generous as you can. Your gifts put food directly into the hands of hungry people. Your generosity provides life saving support.

I was able to take a few pictures while in the camp that I would like to share. I hope these pictures and stories will move the hearts of people in the U.S. to help their brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka.

Join the Sri Lanka crisis relief effort—and provide food and other life saving support—with your gift today.

community kitchen in the camp

community kitchen provides a warm meal for this young girl

The Generous Spirit of Glenwood

I pose with Pastors: Krista S. Lee and Randy S. Chrissis

Tucked cozily adjacent to Lake Minnewaska is the town of Glenwood, Minnesota. (That’s the 32nd state of the union [smile!]). Although this hamlet has a population of just 2532, it should by no means be thought of as sleepy or provincial. The 2117 members of Glenwood Lutheran Church offer themselves passionately in as compassionate givers, engaged in quilting projects, health kits, and for the sake of those living in extreme poverty. Earl Hauge, is a key, energetic lay leader. Margie May, a registered nurse, is a stellar example of the hospitality and concern this bustling small-town congregation extends to guests. Though there’s only one set of traffic lights in the entire Pope County, this congregation is a beacon the light of Christ for those living without hope.

Thanks for having me as a visitor and speaker on Good Shepherd Sunday, 3 May 2009.

Divine, indeed

It's always a blessing to make connections with our partners from around the world. This time, they came to us --here I am in Washington, DC with three representatives from Kuapa Kokoo, in Ghana, who were in town for a meeting with Divine Chocolate. In case you haven't heard about Divine yet, it's one of the coolest companies out there -- Fair Trade and farmer-owned. The farmers of Kuapa Kokoo grow all the cocoa that goes into Divine, and it's the chocolate that we feature in the LWR Chocolate Project.

I hope you'll try some for yourself, and I hope you'll join us in our quest to raise $100,000 to help Divine expand into new markets in the U.S. The more demand we create for Divine Chocolate, the greater the benefits for the farmers of Kuapa Kokoo and their families. Click here to make a gift, and thanks!

Enjoy your chocolate ....