Lay theologian Verna Dozier writes in her book, “The Dream of God” that the Church is called to be the people of God in this world. We are “the church gathered” & “the church scattered.” Each Sunday we gather at this table to break bread together as a community, to hear our story and to recommit ourselves to the dream of God. When we leave, we scatter to live into that dream. A dream where all of God’s children have adequate food, shelter, access to clean water and education. The Kingdom of God is not the pearly gates or streets of gold with some of us getting in and some of us not. The Millennium Development Goals are the worlds response to that vision of a just world.
On September 18, 2000, the United Nations Millennium Declaration was adopted by UN General Assembly, where all the member states of the UN pledged to achieve 8 goals by the year 2015.
So what are the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs? They are 8 time-bound goals that provide benchmarks for tackling extreme poverty, the MDGs are both global and local, tailored to each country to suit specific development needs. They provide a framework to work toward a common end – that everyone, everywhere have adequate shelter, food, water, the resources that come from employment and education, healing and living in a right relationship with our environment.
There are more than 6.4 billion human beings, all of us who are fashioned in the image of our creator. And almost ½ of us are living on less than $1.00 a day, millions die each year of preventable disease, thousands of children under the age of 5 die each and every day of poverty and they die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.
The statistics of death and suffering from extreme poverty are mind numbing and overwhelming.
We are 5 years from the target date of 2015 to meet the millennial challenge and there is still work to be done, but progress has been made and the fact is antipoverty work has saved over 5000 children a day since 1990…. It is a reminder that global poverty does not need to be a depressing topic but can be a hopeful one.
The columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article recently about ordinary people doing extraordinary antipoverty work. One story that captured my heart is about Maggie Doyne a 19 year old traveling after high school who found herself in a remote area ravaged by war… captivated by a child’s smile, she raised money to make sure the little girl went to school. Maggie was hooked…. And decided if she could help one child, why not 2 children…. why not all the children? She has gone on to build a shelter and a school. She is still in her remote mountain village now overseeing a school for 220 children. She is all of 23 years old.
About 10 years ago a couple went to Tapachula, Mexico on a mission trip that was supposed to last for 6 months, to care for several orphans sponsored by a religious charity. While they were there, the charity went bankrupt, the leaders all managed to abscond and Pam and Alan were left literally holding the babies in a poverty stricken area of Southern Mexico. What could they do? What would you do? What would I do? The children in their care had already endured physical and mental abuse and now they were to just abandon them to the streets of Mexico?
This story reminds me of the story of the rich young man. Master what must I do to have eternal life? Jesus told the young man to sell it all and follow me.
Pam and Alan sold everything they had in Australia and stayed to care for the children. They are still living in Tapachula and at last count I believe there are 60 children in their family.
Would I have had the courage and the faith to give up my home and Country the way Pam and Alan or Maggie did? Or would I be like the rich young man? I don’t know………… Most of us will not be asked to “sell it all” but we will be and are being asked to give all that we have and follow Jesus and participate in God’s mission of healing the world.
I suppose that it is fair to question what difference does it make, that 220 children are being educated in a remote village in the Himalayan’s or 60 children are safe and cared for when millions of others are still suffering. It’s a question I struggle with…when I am overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. What can one person possibly do to make a difference? Kathleen O’Leary who spoke about her experience working in a makeshift hospital in earthquake-ravaged Haiti said, “ I had to keep reminding myself that I couldn’t save the entire Country”…………….. Perhaps she couldn’t ……..but she did made a difference in the life of each person she cared for.
And maybe that is all any of us can do… is to help one person at a time…. The larger problems will be solved only if the governments of the world make addressing poverty a top priority. …But For those 220 children in Nepal or 60 in Tapachula or for the critically ill patients in Haiti… their lives have been changed forever.
Here comes the tricky part…. What can you and I do to make a difference? Not many of us can or want to leave our home and our families to go to some far-flung Country without running water or basic sanitation We do want to connect with others and make a meaningful difference in this world, but we are all so busy with our jobs and families that we just don’t know how we help or what we can do. So here are a few ideas…and I have plenty more… …
- Buy fair trade products… Just Coffee from Mexico, Olive Oil from Palestine… the money goes back to the people who are growing and roasting the coffee beans, growing and pressing the olives……..not to a mega- corporation. The Village of El Aguilar in Chiapas Mexico was able to reopen a school and install a clean water system from the profits of Just Coffee.
- Micro lending through organizations like Kiva or Global giving…today in the New York Times there was a column about a woman who got a $70 micro loan and parlayed it into business where she earned enough to educate all three of her children and send her eldest to college.
- Buy a Malaria Net through Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD)- The reduction in child mortality can be directly related to programs like Nets for Life. The Diocese of Minnesota for their Lenten Project in 2011 has committed to raising the funds to buy the number of nets equivalent to every person in the diocese. I believe that in approximately 30,000 nets. Those nets potentially translates into 30,000 lives saved…… for $15.00 a net. How easy is that?
- If you do want to travel… Deacon John Mather will be taking a building team to Veracruz, Mexico in the Spring to build a school and resource center for the proverty stricken children of the Barrio of LaLaguna.
- Join Trinity Cathedrals MDG committee…. Donate yours ideas, your time and your resources to a project or organization your passionate about.
The Presiding Bishop frequently uses the Hebrew word Shalom … which is understood to mean peace…. But a peace that is more than an absence of war… it’s a rich multi-hued word that speaks to God’s vision of a just world, where the hungry are fed, the sick healed, it’s the vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of others, living in peace with God and in right relationship with the rest of creation.
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth….no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it …. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime” ….. What would this world look like that Isaiah talks about? Health care, education, plentiful safe water, environmental stewardship….. This vision isn’t just pipe dreams of social idealists and do-gooders…. This is the dream of God for us?
We are called to live out this vision of Shalom. . this dream of God…. “It is the vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway”.
The Millennium Development Goals are nothing new for us… The World governments may have given it a name and measurable goals… ……but its who we are and what we are called to do..... Jesus showed us the way through his unrelenting concern for the poor, the marginalized and the outcasts…….we are called by our baptismal covenant to care for the hungry, the thirsty and needy of the world. It is not an option for us.....
If each one of us who has ever lifted their voice to God in despair asking…… but what can I do? I’m just one person and the needs of the world are just to overwhelming………………remember ……Jesus didn’t send the disciplines out alone….. He sent them out 2 by 2….. Anne Frank wrote in her diary “how wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to change the world.”
……….,So What if? …………What if ……. each and every one us resolved to work together,………… lifting our voices together …….. We can change the world…… and we don’t have to wait a single moment to start.
Amen
Thank you - well said - ...
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