Water for Life
August 23-24, 2008
Matthew 16:13-20
We are knowledgeable people, educated people. We know how to negotiate our lives and our world. But despite all the knowledge that is ours, our knowledge is tiny compared to the knowledge of God. Paul grapples with this truth in today’s second reading, for he extols the riches of the depths and wisdom and knowledge of God. It is a knowledge so vast that all things come from it and through it and to it. And when we understand the breadth of God’s power and knowledge, it becomes the responsibility of every believer to try to know more, to expand our thinking and our understanding. We will never know what God knows. But the more that we know, the closer we will come to understanding the will of God.
Now we have an opportunity today to expand our thinking, for Jane Dinda is here from Water for Life to ask our support for this project in Tanzania. The project is not a huge one; it will impact a few hundred people. But the need is so fundamental that it demands our attention. This project strives to provide safe drinking water. We take that for granted. We take for granted the fact that so many people in our world cannot drink without putting their health at risk. And that simple fact alone should expand our thinking, to help us realize that our experience is so different than most other people in our world.
If someone were to ask us to describe the typical Christian in our world today, most of us would describe someone similar to ourselves. But we would be wrong. The typical Christian in the world today is a woman, living in Latin America or Africa, where now over 70% of Christians live in our world. This woman has little money. Her husband farms and tries to find extra jobs whenever he can. She pulls together whatever she is able to sell in the marketplace. Her children do not have vaccinations, so they are often sick. She tries to keep them in school, but there are no textbooks. The political situation in the country she lives in is fragile. The national government does hardly anything, and the local government only functions if she is able to come up with a bribe.
This is the typical Christian in our world today, and her experience is very different from our own. And yet she believes in the same Christ that we do. Perhaps she believes more deeply, because her experience allows her to see how Jesus reveals the God who cares for the poor.
Now I bring these reflections before us today not to make us feel guilty. There is little value in guilt. But when we recognize the difference between ourselves and most people in the world, it should motivate us to action, to search for ways to see that more and more people have the essentials of life. If we can do that, if we can listen and understand, our appreciation of the gospel will deepen. So listen to what Jane has to say today after communion, and do your best to respond to her appeal. But most of all, allow the witness that she gives to enlarge your thinking, so that you might better understand the struggles of so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world. In that understanding, we may better appreciate the God who loves us all.
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