Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas by Lauren Stanley, December 27,2009

John 1:1-18

N'ap Mache Nan Limye A Bondye

(We Are Marching in the Light of God, Haitian Creole)

            Ba ism al Ab wa al Ibn wa Roho al Kudus, Allah wahed. In nom de Dieu unique, Pere, Fils, et Saint Esprit. In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

            That is how John the Evangelist begins his Gospel, his version of the Good News of God in our lives:

            In the beginning was the Word. The Word was not created, the Word simply is, just as God simply is ... even from before the beginning.

            Then John goes on to tell us that the Word was the Light of all people, and that that Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

            Now there's a part of me that wonders why John had to tell us these things, because this Light of which he speaks has been there all along. After all, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep ... and God said, "Let there be light" - perhaps even in the voice that Cecil B. DeMille gave him, in which case what God actually said was LIGHT! - and there was light, and God saw that the light was good.

            So the Light of which John speaks was there from the beginning.

            So why does John feel the need to tell us about this Light, about the power of this Light that is so strong that the darkness in which it shines cannot overcome it.

                        John tells us what we already know because he knew that we, created by God to revel in this Light, spend far too much time huddling in the darkness of our lives, cowering there, fearful of a world beset by war and hatred, by recession and high unemployment, by illness and death and devastation. We spend so much time, waste so much of our lives huddling in that darkness that we sometimes are unable to see the Light that God shines upon us over and over again.

            But that Light - the one by which the Hebrews were led at night; the one that Job tells us made the darkness flee; the Light the psalmist calls a lamp to our feet and a light to our path; the Light that Isaiah says is everlasting; the Light that Jesus proclaimed himself to be - that Light, John reminds us, shone before we were and will continue to shine long after we are, and there is nothing - nothing - in heaven or on earth that can extinguish it.

            The Light of God, which came to us in the beginning by the word of the Lord and came to us again in the form of a babe lying in a manger, shines forth to this day, even in the remotest, hardest-hit portions of God's very good creation.

            • • •

            For the past four and a half years, I have been blessed to share with you the good news of your brothers and sisters in Christ half a world away in Sudan, who have been shining the light of Christ throughout that devastated land and who have invited you into partnership in the Gospel with them.

            Today, I am blessed to share with you more good news, from a different set of your brothers and sisters in Christ, those who live in Haiti, only a few hours away from us by plane, who are also shining the light of Christ throughout their desperate land, and who also invite you into partnership in the Gospel with them.

            All of these siblings of yours are people who have walked in the darkness. They have seen the darkness spread across their lands, but rather than huddling in the darkness, rather than hiding from the light, they have gone forth, shining the light of Christ that they have seen, that they have received, so that others may see it, others may be drawn to it, others may bask in it.

            And just as your Sudani siblings in Christ march in the light of God, so, too, do your Haitian siblings in Christ.

            In Haiti, God's Light shines so brightly some days it is simply blinding in its brilliance. The Episcopal Church in Haiti is the largest Diocese in The Episcopal Church, with more than 200,000 members. There are more than 200 congregations, more than 250 schools, clinics, hospitals, teaching programs, agriculture programs, programs to reforest the deforested areas, to develop small businesses, to feed those who do not have enough to eat, to give water to those who have no clean water to drink, to cure the sick and give sight to the blind, to make the lame leap for joy and the deaf to hear. There is a school that cares for and educates the abandoned handicapped children of the land, and another school to teach children art, and another school to teach music - which is so good, so renowned, that it is the home of the national symphony orchestra - and there is yet another school for business training and another for mechanical training and another for computer training ...

Your sisters and brothers in Christ in Haiti are truly marching in the light of God, and they are shining that light everywhere they go.

            I have seen God's light shining in the tiny village of Troin, in the southeastern mountains, at St. Marc's Church, which 18 months ago was a tiny mission with 25 members and today is a mother parish, with 250 in attendance every Sunday morning, 100 of whom have to stand outside the church because there is no more room at that particular inn. The priest there, Pere Fruitho Michaud, has personally gone door to door in the area, inviting the people to come, and at least 250 more people have said they would, once the church expands to accommodate them.

            I have seen God's light shining on top of the mountain on the Ile de La Gonâve, which sits in the bay across from the capital of Port au Prince, in the tiny village of Platon Balai, which can only be accessed by a two-hour drive over non-existent excuses for roads, followed by a one-hour walk up the mountain, and then followed by a 45-minute ride on a donkey for the final ascent. Once you reach the top of that mountain, literally in the middle of nowhere, you find the brand new church building of Sts. Simon and Jude. Five years ago, there was nothing but an abandoned foundation there; the people had given up hope of ever having a real church building, or real school classrooms to go with it. But then a small parish in Arkansas - an Anglican Mission in America parish, mind you - decided to do something about that, and the people in Arkansas raised $40,000 and through a lot of sweat and hard labor, Sts. Simon and Jude was built, and on October 2 of this year, it was consecrated by Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin.

            I have seen God's light shining in Cap Haitien on the North coast, at Ste. Esprit church, where men and women and children literally dance up the aisle as they bring forth the gifts of the people - money, and food, and water, and hoes, and baskets and seeds - at the offertory, and where during the week, 800 children attend both primary and secondary school.

            God's light is shining in the mountains of the Central Plateau, where our parishes host medical missions set up in tiny churches on top of those mountains, where the people come by the hundreds to receive basic medical care from our partners in the United States.

            And God's light shines forth at Maison de Naissance, a modern maternity center and community health program run by midwives and nurses to care for the women and their families in Larnage in the southwestern part of Haiti, a land where one in every 16 women will die in childbirth (200 times the rate faced by mothers in the U.S.) and one in every 12 infants will die before their first birthday. Those who work at Maison de Naissance and those who support it have decided to wipe out those odds so that no longer will Haiti have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere.

            The people of the Church of Haiti have seen the light that shines forth from God and they are taking that light out into the darkness of their land and shining it upon every sector, every region, every tiny village ... because they know - they know - that God's light is far stronger than the darkest darkness of humanity. They know that God's light can overcome all poverty, all hatred, all divisions, and they are determined to shine that light everywhere they can in order to change the land in which they live.

            In Haiti, we have an expression: Bondye di ou: Fè pa ou, m'a fè pa'm. "God says to you: Do your part and I'll do mine." So that's what we do: We do our part - marching in the Light of God every day, every place, with everyone we meet - knowing that God will do God's part - because God promised so to do!

            Never mind that Haiti in its 500-year history has seen nothing but darkness. Never mind that from the moment Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492, the people of Haiti have suffered from oppression and repression. Never mind that because of its location in the West Indies, it is devastated by hurricanes almost every single year - in 2008, four hurricanes struck in three weeks. Never mind that its governments have proven to be mostly corrupt and have treated the people with contempt. Never mind that for many years, it was a land ruled by despots who delighted in tormenting their people in order to fill their pockets. Never mind that Haiti is and long has been the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere (it's almost one word now - Haiti-the-poorest-nation-in-the-Western-Hemisphere ...).

            Your brothers and sisters in Christ, who, just like your Sudani siblings are related to you not by the blood of their birth but by the waters of their baptism, pay no attention to the darkness that permeates their lives. Instead, they burst forth out of that darkness, and march in the light of God, the light that John proclaimed to them anew, sure that they can do their part and that God will do God's part.

            And just like your Sudani siblings, your Haitian siblings are asking you to do the same: To march in the Light of God every single moment of your lives. You already know how to do this. I know that - I walked through your parish this morning and saw the set-up in your classrooms. You have CARITAS with you this week, and are giving shelter and warmth and light and love to people who have no shelter, too little warmth, not enough light and nowhere near enough love. So you already are marching in the light of God. You are doing exactly what John tells us: That we who are created in the Light are called to live in that Light ... it is the very reason for our existence.

            Ansam, nou kapab klere limye a Bondye sou tout moun a Bondye.

            Together, we can shine God's light on all of God's people. We can shine that Light into the darkest recesses of our lives, and of the lives of every single person we meet. And when the darkness of our lives threatens to overwhelm us, all we have to do is remember:

            N'ap mache nan limye a Bondye, n'ap mache nan limye a Bondye.

            Amen.