29 April 2016

Dear friends in my supporting congregations:

 

Every morning, as her son prepares to leave for preschool, the mother of 4-year old Luis Firas takes a stick of oil and makes the sign of the cross on his forehead. Blessing is important for this Christian family, which fled from Mosul during the 2014 takeover of the area by ISIS, and today–like tens of thousands of other displaced–lives in a small modular temporary shelter in Erbil, a town in northern Iraq controlled by Kurds. As I photographed their morning ritual three weeks ago, Luis grabbed the stick and marked a cross on his mother's forehead, also blessing her. He then turned to me, the stranger with a camera, and motioned to my forehead. I bent forward and he marked me with the sign of the cross.

 

 

As I wander around the world I often feel blessed by those I encounter. If we take seriously all that stuff in Matthew 25, those we encounter at the margins of our societies may just be Jesus. And as we reach out to bless with our meager attempts at justice and mercy, Jesus reaches back in the hands of the poor to mark our foreheads, to forgive us and claim us for the building of the beloved community, the kin-dom of God.   

 

Yet being blessed is a dangerous thing. While it imparts joy and affirmation, it also establishes relation and creates a link. That implies responsibility. And so when I think about Luis and his family’s exodus from oppression, from what some call genocide, I must be honest about my complicity in his suffering. It was the U.S. invasion of his country in 2003 that built the house of chaos and violence that ISIS moved into. Although blessing is ultimately the work of God, repentance clears the way for that blessing to turn into true transformation, true conversion anew to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

Besides the trip to Irag, in recent months I have gone to Nepal to document the work of the church there, including the process of reconstruction after the massive earthquake a year ago, and I spent some time in Bolivia and Argentina documenting issues around climate change and how Latin Americans are wrestling with their political memory. I also spent several days in Texas documenting the work that churches are doing to provide a welcome to women and children who’ve been released from detention after seeking political asylum in the United States. I’ve also had the pleasure of helping to lead a Five-Day Spiritual Academy, in which we used images and the practice of visio divina to explore our response to people at the margins, and I spoke at a western jurisdiction gathering of United Methodist Women. 

 

As always, I’m thankful to your congregation for its support. You not only make possible what I do, but you also, in your own local ministries, help draw the connections between the struggles of people in far-off places and those in our own communities who fight for housing or respect. Thanks for your enthusiastic embrace of God in this adventure of mission with all who hurt and who suffer. May all of us continue to be blessed as we encounter Christ in our encounters with them.