St. Andrew’s Mission of the Month for March is our ministry in Nicaragua.   We partner with an organization called the Rainbow Network, based out of Springfield, Missouri.   I love to tell the story:

Before coming to Omaha, five years ago, Nancy and I served a Methodist congregation in Springfield, where we inherited members
Keith and Karen Jaspers.  Keith had been on the National Board of Habitat For Humanity and had a vision of taking Habitat principles to rural Nicaragua, one of the poorest places on the earth.  In addition to building houses, the Rainbow ministry would include education, health care, feeding stations, micro-economic loans.
  What Keith called the Rainbow Network was just getting off the ground when Nancy and I moved to the Ozarks.   That was 1998. 
I got in on the ground level and was blessed to be on the first Rainbow Board of Directors.  Over the course of seven years in Springfield, I saw the program grow exponentially.  
 Some current numbers:  Rainbow is now running 140 feeding stations, serving over thirty-five-hundred children, and pregnant and nursing moms.   Just under 6,000 young people are in Rainbow schools.   Each month, Rainbow doctors treat over 1,600 patients.   645 houses have been built. 

 When Nancy and I came to Omaha, we shared some of the Rainbow story with Saints of Andrew.   This sparked interest, a trickle of members going down to Central America to see for themselves.  These came back with glowing reports, so that still others wanted to go, and we’ve been blessed to take several groups now, including a contingent of youth last winter.   We’ll be going again at some point and would love to take you with us.   Many who’ve gone, myself included, count it as a life changing experience.
 

 St. Andrew’s has established a relationship with our namesake village of San Andres, underwriting the Rainbow work in that comarca.  When Rainbow brought some folks from the comarcas to North America for a thank-you/information tour, a couple of years back, St. Andrew’s was one of the tour stops.  That was a great evening. 
One of our members, Mark Roberts, is now on the Rainbow Board of Directors.   Others who have not gone themselves have become major supporters. St. Andrew’s has become an important part of the Rainbow story, and Rainbow has been very good for the soul of St. Andrew’s.

I’ll have people ask if we’re “evangelizing” down there.  No.  Folks in rural Nicaragua lack many things, but faith in Christ is not among them.   In fact, faith is Christ is about all many of them have.   My heart is always touched by the little shrines to Jesus often seen in the Rainbow homes.  These folks don’t have big-screen plasma television sets, but they do have tributes to the Lord.

 The folks in the rural villages don’t get many visitors.   They always make a big deal of welcoming the norteamericanos.  There will often be a fiesta of sorts.   People will show us around the communities, invite us into their homes.  A Rainbow home will be about the size of my garage, but when you consider that most of these folks were living in shacks like what you’re seeing on the screen, the Rainbow homes are a big step up. 
I might add that these houses are not “gifts.”  People pay for them through sweat equity and small monthly mortgages.  

 It was two years ago now, that we met this lady, whose picture you see on the screen.  She’d been selected to show us her home.   That’s considered an honor.   The kids would have scrubbed up.  See the bright dress her daughter is wearing.  Mom had her hair done, earrings in.  We’re talking Sunday best, what would have been her Easter clothes.  I remember she greeted us with a big smile and a t-shirt announcing she wanted to do something sexual with us.  
 
 
Let’s be perfectly clear on this: I am 100% certain she was innocent as to what the words meant.  The lettering was in English.  Nobody in the comarcas reads or speaks English, and even the translators wouldn’t have likely known this very crude American colloquialism.  I suspect the nice lady would be innocent of the meaning even if it had been explained to her.

A short digression:  I remember in grade school, the teacher was instructing us on the birds and the bees.  I was the only boy in the class the teacher could call on without breaking into laughter.  I thought she was literally talking about birds and bees.  My Methodist parents had never shared such things with their first born.  That night, a farm boy explained it to me in graphic detail, my eyes were opened, and the next day in class, when the teacher called on me, I was as sniggering as the rest of the boys.   All these years later, it makes me sort of sad to think about it.  

I take pictures of almost everything we see In Nicaragua, but not this.  This photo was taken by one in our group who realized what was on the t-shirt only after sorting through what was on his camera.  
Two years later, I still find it heartbreaking.  As I said, when the benefactors show up, the people in the villages wear their very best, and the very best this woman had was a t-shirt that would have humiliated her, if she knew what it was suggesting.  

 Of course, this t-shirt would have arrived in the community via some kind of clothing drive in the United States.  (Frankly, at that moment, I was pleased to know St. Andrew’s has NOT done clothing drives for Nica.  Better to send baseball equipment, as we did last year.) 

I was reading in the newspapers about some of the junk people have donated to the Haiti relief effort, including half-used tubes of Preparation H, expired antibiotics, and other such things that actually complicate relief efforts.  I tried to imagine someone going through old clothes here in the states, coming across this t-shirt, thinking, Well, it’s good enough for those people.  I do hope the giver didn’t claim it as a tax-write off. 
 

 There is a certain Eden-ic quality to Nicaragua, if you can somehow ignore the poverty and squalor so many live in.   These days, our travelers lodge at a Best Western across from the airport, but when I first started going down there, twelve years ago, we stayed in a place on the other side of Managua that resembled a run down church camp with armed guards.   Still, just breathing the early morning air was invigorating.   There were parrots in the trees, fruit hanging off the vine.   You could almost imagine Adam and Eve walking through here.       
 
 According to Genesis, the first man and woman were created in original innocence--no need for concepts like good and evil, right and wrong.  The Creator didn’t want them to have that burden, so Adam and Eve were told they could eat freely from the fruit of any of the trees in this abundant garden, with the exception of “the tree of the knowledge of good evil.”   That will only bring you grief.  Stay away.
 
 That’s when the snake entered the picture, promising the woman that if she and her man ate the forbidden fruit, “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  So the innocents bit into the fruit, and their eyes were opened, and this was the great revelation:  They were naked.   Whee.  

 It occurs to me that if Adam and Eve had been living in our time, they might have asked the snake for a camera so they could take pictures of each other to post on the internet, but at this point humans still had the decency to reflexively want to cover themselves.   We’re told the man and woman fashioned something like loincloths from fig leaves.   Reading from Genesis 3, starting at verse 8:
 

Then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?”  The man said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked;
and I hid myself.”   (There’s a thin line, sometimes, between innocence and not-very-bright.)  God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which
I commanded you not to eat?”

Man points to the woman, says, “She made me do it.”  Woman
points to the snake, “He made me do it.”  Latter says “What’d you expect? I’m a snake.”  And the human situation was all downhill from there…

 This week, in our church-wide Lenten Study of the Adam Hamilton book, 24 HOURS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, we’ve been looking at the chapter where Jesus is Condemned By The Righteous.   At one point, Jesus had talked about the religious leaders of his generation as a “brood of vipers”--and he was about to get a full dose of their venom.
Having been arrested, Jesus was brought before the assembly of religious leaders collectively known as the Sanhedrin.  Hamilton explains the Sanhedrin was “a council comprised of seventy-one elders who were considered to be among the wisest and most pious men of their time.” 
The verdict was never much in doubt.   It was the religious hierarchy that had wanted Jesus silenced in the first place.

Reading from the court report:  
 

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed one?” Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”  Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, ‘Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard this blasphemy!  What is your decision?” All of them condemned him as deserving of death.  Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!”  The guards also took him over and beat him.

Comments Adam Hamilton:

We need to step back from this scene for a moment to recognize its full import and appreciate its tragic irony.  Christians believe that in Jesus, God walked in human flesh on this earth.  He was in that sense like an emperor who so desires to know his subjects that he dons ordinary clothes and lives among them, with no one recognizing or understanding him. The God of the universe chose to walk in human flesh as an itinerant preacher, teacher, carpenter, healer—and pauper.  He came as one of us.  He healed the sick, forgave sinners, showed compassion to the lost, and taught people what God was really like. We must not miss the irony here:  It was not the “sinners” who arrested God when he walked among us.  Those who took him into custody and tried him were the most pious and religious people on the face of the earth. The God they claimed to serve walked among them in flesh, and they could not see him.  They were so blinded by their love for power and their fear of losing it that they missed him.  The people you would most expect to recognize and hail Jesus instead arrested him in darkness and brought him to trial.  They put God on trial for blasphemy.  Jesus’ testimony that he was in fact the Messiah outraged them; and they found him guilty, convicting God of a crime worthy of the death penalty—blasphemy against himself!  They spat on him blindfolded him, and beat him….”
 

Nancy suggested I look at this representation of the scene by
James J. Tissot.   I had not previously paid much attention to the detail that Jesus was blindfolded by his accusers.   But Jesus had talked about the religious leaders as “blind guides,” and Hamilton talks of them as being blinded by their love for power--making their blindfolding of Jesus particularly ironic. 

I have found myself wondering what it might have looked like if these same very righteous guys had been with us in San Andres, seeing the woman in the T-Shirt.   It occurs to me that one of three things might have happened.

1) The righteous guys might have put their hands over their eyes and walked out in disgust—they might even have spit at the poor woman--leaving her to wonder what in the world she’d done to offend them. 

2)  The righteous guys might not have been able to take their
eyes off her chest.   Scratch the surface of self-described righteous people and you’ll too often find a lot of sexual repression.   Given the headlines of clergy-behaving-badly, I don’t have to tell you how ugly that can get.

3)   The righteous guys might have insisted that a translator
talk to the woman, open her eyes to the transgression of the t-shirt.   Tell her what it says, what it means, insist that she change into something else.  Never mind that she probably didn’t have much of anything else.  This would, of course, have humiliated her, but better that than allow her to remain in ignorance, right?

 Not Jesus, though.  Jesus might not have even seen the
words on the shirt.  I suspect he would have been looking into the nice woman’s eyes, focused on her face and the faces of her children, communicating love by his own countenance.   If he’d noticed the shirt at all, I can hear him thinking to himself, “Bless her heart…” the love never leaving his face…
 
Adam Hamilton attributes the righteous guys’ behavior to fear—fear of losing power, fear of losing control.   But I wonder if this wasn’t a factor, as well:  Loss of innocence.  

I could have never dreamed, when I started preaching in Daviess County, Missouri, back in 1974, that all these years later I’d be heading up what amounts to a not-so-small non-profit corporation.   Back then, I just wanted to preach and sing about Jesus, pull out the poorly-tuned 12-string guitar and lead everybody in a round of Kum Ba Yah.  Talk about innocent!  I still can’t believe I traded my rock-and-roll-era bass guitar for a 12-string. 

But at some point, the United Methodist Church decided I had promise.  I got promoted.  A First Church pastor.  A University Church pastor.  A big suburban church pastor.  And I liked it!   But even as it was happening, I was aware of the spiritual peril of liking it too much.  
 
In the 1980s, a woman named Susan Howatch wrote a series of wonderful novels about clergy in the Church Of England.   These were types I recognized.  My favorite book in the series was titled ULTIMATE PRIZES.   Note the serpent in the center of the paperback cover!  An ambitious, career-oriented clergy-type is talking with a spiritual director, who asks:

  “How long have you been chasing the prizes?”
  “Oh, forever.  It’s the only way to get on, isn’t it?  It’s the way to stay out of the pit.”
  “What pit?”
  “The failure pit.  The one where the coffin is.”
  “Failure equals death?  Winning the prizes equals life?”
 “Yes.  But…”  My memory was regurgitating the famous declaration of Jesus according to St. Matthew:  ‘He that findth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.’  Covering my face with my hands I said in all horror:  “I’ve won everything I’ve ever wanted—but…. I’ve gone very, very wrong somewhere, (and) I’ve no idea how it’s happened.  All I know is that I’ve ended up in the most appalling wasteland and my whole career in the Church is in jeopardy.”
The spiritual director:  “Your career in the Church?”
 “Yes, I’m actually rather successful…..”
 
 “And what about your life of service to God?  That surely is more important than any career in the Church?”
 “Ah, yes, I said.”

My guess is that many of the 71 guys in the Sanhedrin didn’t get into this with the idea of being power-brokers.  Most of them probably just wanted to open up the holy books and share with people in their local synagogues.   But somewhere along they line they took a wrong turn.  Perhaps we could even say they were seduced, as surely as were Adam and Eve.  
  
 Folks, I have tried to keep this on my heart since the first time I heard anyone say, That Bruce Davis is going places:  The Ultimate Prizes are not things the world can give.  The Ultimate Prizes are not things the world can take away.   It’s been easy for me to hear Jesus saying to a group of preachers:  What does it profit you to gain the biggest church and lose your soul?  And, for that matter, what does it profit the church? 

 Let me be quick to add, the dynamics I’m talking about are hardly exclusive to my job.   Bob Dylan had a song with this line:
 
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp (whatever that means)\
But now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

I image Jesus staring into the vacuum of Caiaphas’ eyes, the high priest maybe still expecting Jesus to say Hey, do you want to make a deal?—instead Jesus communicating, No deal, Jack.  No compromise.    
  
    Of course, many of us are no strangers to compromise.  Our eyes have long been open to what it takes to make it in this hard world.   No wonder some have become hard ourselves.  To quote Janis:
 

I guess I’m just like a turtle, hiding underneath his horny shell
 Yes, I’m just like a turtle, hiding underneath his horny shell
 But you know I’m very well protected,
 I know this (expletive deleted) life too well….

 And so our 71 professional good people came out from underneath their shells--at night, of course!--and condemned the Son of God to death.   None of them would be found at the cross itself, of course.  They would leave it to Rome to actually kill Jesus, even after the Roman governor had declared, “This is an innocent man.”   By then the righteous guys had gone back into their shells.  
 
 Let me inquire:  When people look at you, do they see a vacuum in your eyes?

A passage I’ve tried to keep on my heart is Matthew 10:16, where Jesus tells his disciples.  “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”  
My eyes have been open a long time.  I’ve seen things I wish I’d never seen.  Know things I wish I didn’t know.  There are a lot of wolves out there. 
I understand, up close and personal, the lyric to the old song, “It’s easy to be hard.”  Easy to be cynical.  Easy to vote with the other 70.  Easy to walk by for 21st time, or 121st times, or the thousandth and twenty-first time. 
And I have wanted so much to retain some degree of innocence.  

 I suspect that’s one of the reasons I keep going back to Nicaragua.  If you think I do this for them, you don’t know me very well.  My soul profits by proximity to people like the lady in the t-shirt, and the reminder that, as I read the gospel, she’s got a better chance of going to heaven in that shirt, than I do in clergy robes or others in this culture will in fancy suits or the designer dress of desperate housewives.   
 

She doesn’t need me to lecture her; I need her to teach me, just by being who she is, about simple things; things that can so easily get lost in the complexities of this culture, but are closer to the Ultimate Prizes than anything we can order online.  

 BRD