Delivered March 4, 2007
by Pastor Marilyn Henderson
Petrona Villasboa and her husband, Juan Talavera, live with their nine children at the end of a long dirt road. The view from their front window shows a landscape dominated by soy, sowed into hundreds of tidy rows that extend to the horizon. In the town of Pirapey 35, a community of 1,600 people in the southern state of Itapua, Paraguay, "Petrona's house" is nearly an institution. Her household bears the constant influx of neighbors and relatives; yet Petrona says that the house "feels empty inside."
Petrona's third-youngest son, Silvino Talavera, died ... at the age of 11. Silvino was walking home from school one day, taking his normal route through a neighboring soy plantation growing Monsanto RoundUp Ready hybrid seeds, which require regular doses of a potent herbicide to thrive. He was fifteen meters from his home when he was enveloped in a cloud of the Monsanto herbicide cocktail RoundUp sprayed from a cropduster. He arrived home barely able to breathe. Silvino was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he died five days later, on January 7, 2003.
Four days later, on January 11, 2003, Petrona pressed charges against the plantation owners, Hermann Schlender and Alfred Laustenlager, accusing them of homicide. "It was a strange case from the beginning," said Petrona's lawyer, Juan Martens Molas. "By law, the procedures for Silvino's case could last for a maximum of three years ..." Under the law, if the case were still unsettled after the three-year mark, the defendants would be exempt from any form of punishment. "Without a doubt, this practice is taken advantage of by people with a lot of political or economic power, who can influence judges and prosecutors, and allows them to interfere with the law, which is exactly what they tried to do in Silvino's case," said Martens ... Upon pressing charges, Petrona found herself the subject of neglect, harassment and even death threats from her neighbors in Pirapey 35. According to Petrona, a large percentage of the residents in Pirapey 35 work for Schlender and Laustenlager and received financial bonuses for threatening and intimidating Petrona and her family. "I've lived in Pirapey 35 for the last twenty-six years. They've only been living here for six years, but everyone has turned against me. I have no money or anything to offer them." (Americas.org)
Later news releases reveal that Petrona's brother, a leader in one of the farmers' organizations, was killed by a Paraguayan paramilitary group who were training with US advisors. Farmers who have united to protest the multi-national agribusiness companies taking over their land are now being accused of being terrorists and are targets for physical abuse, torture and death.
I don't know if Petrona and Juan are Christians. I can only begin to imagine what life for them must be like. I wonder, if they are Christians, whether they find "safe shelter" in God.
I found this story this week when I was preparing for the World Day of Prayer service that wasn't on Friday night. It is a disturbing story in a number of ways. But it is a story that is repeated, with different themes and situations, in most of the countries of the world. Just not where I've ever lived. But this story of suffering and injustice does not invalidate the suffering and injustice with which we all live.
What do we do when we're scared? When life takes an unexpected and frightening turn? When we are faced with circumstances with which we've had no previous experience?
Have you ever tried to put yourself in Abram's place in these OT Bible stories? For instance, it may not be too difficult to imagine how one might pack up and move into a new "country." Abram left family and friends behind, first in Ur then in Haran. He and Sarai knew they would probably never see their families again, yet they went. Some of us have made similar moves, although the times and circumstances are very different.
But in today's text there are some pretty strange things going on. Abram and Sarai seem to be pretty well settled in their new country of Canaan, they made the break with Lot and Abram and his servant men and neighbors rescued Lot from some warring kings. In the previous chapter Abram gave one tenth of the loot to the king of Salem, which we now know as Jerusalem. King Melchizedek served Abram wine and bread and, as a priest of God Most High, blessed Abram.
Abram was done moving. He and Sarai had escaped from Egypt unscathed and rich. They found a place to pitch their tent and settle in, a place with good neighbors. But Abram keeps remembering God's promises, particularly the promise of a son. And while Abram and his men had done well on the battle field, Abram didn't fool himself. He was an old man and Sarai, while she was still beautiful, was an old woman. He had this strange yet compelling relationship with God who had proved to be powerful, yet God sometimes seemed a bit capricious, too. After all, God had promised him blessing, land and a son and Abram had yet to see either.
So, after things had settled down a bit after the excitement of rescuing Lot in the Valley of the Kings near Salem, God appeared to Abram in a vision and in this vision they had a discussion that began with God reassuring Abram, telling him not to be afraid of God and that God would give him a great reward. And Abram blurted out his all-consuming longing for a son - "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless ..." In other words, God, you can't give me anything I could really care about more than a son. I don't care about being a blessing, I don't care about sheep and goats and servants and all the rest of it - I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF IT!! All I really, truly want - more than anything - is a son. I want to teach my son the secrets of life I've learned. I want to introduce him to you. I want to show him how to deal with people. I want to find him a wife who will love him like Sarai loves me. And I don't want my slave to inherit all you have given me. I want my son to have it all.
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you really didn't care what else happened in your life as long as that something was granted? And did you have to wait for that something, maybe for a very long time? Perhaps you had to work hard during the waiting. Perhaps you told God about your desire. And hoped that God would grant you this desire, particularly if it seemed to fit in with God's overall purposes. Perhaps you told God about this many times, thinking God may have been busy and forgotten. And the days and months and years passed and there was no answer.
If this has ever been your experience, you know a little of what Abram was going through. The cultural context in those ancient times was quite different from today in North America. Suffice it to say that Abram and Sarai had to live with what was considered a great disgrace - childlessness. They had it all - except what they most longed for. And they suffered.
How does the Christian deal with hope deferred, with crisis, with fear, with tragedy, with suffering - with all those difficult things life brings us? Today's theme is "God gathers us together in safe shelter." What does it mean to find "safe" shelter in the context of God's kingdom?
Some have tried to deny that bad things happen. I don't believe that followers of Jesus can have integrity when they try to live in denial for the truth is that bad things do happen to those who love and serve God.
We lost our home in a tornado when Eric was doing his pastoral training in Hesston, Kansas. If anyone should have been protected from such a storm, a man training to serve God as a pastor should have been. Don't you think? Then there are the missionaries who were burned at the stake a few years ago in one of the former Soviet Union states. I wonder how Petrona and the millions like her who suffer from the unharnessed greed of others answer this question. There are endless examples of Christians who have suffered, either because of their faith or just because they are alive. And while Abram and Sarai did eventually have the joy of a son, not everyone who is childless will be given this great joy by God.
What does it mean to find safe shelter in God? Let's look at Abram's story again. Gen. 15.6 says, "And he [Abram] believed the Lord ..." This may sound like a tired, old cliché, yet the people of God didn't expect to be rescued from all their problems. Abram trusted that God would be with him, that God would be true to the promise given. Psalm 27 says, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" The psalmist isn't saying there will be no problems. He says he's no longer afraid of what might happen because God is with him. This psalmist has found God's safe shelter: "One thing I have asked of the Lord that I will seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."
I believe that God's safe shelter is anywhere God is. It is a "place" of the spirit where we recognize God's power and presence above all else. God's safe shelter encompasses yet transcends all human experience. God's safe shelter is like God's word - it is here, among us.
John begins his gospel with these words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
God is in all things.
Paul says in Ephesians that God is
"... above all and through all and in all."
Again in Colossians:
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for all things in heaven and on earth ... have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together."
Paul says in Rom. 8,
Who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
nor angels nor rulers
nor things present or things to come
nor powers or heights or anything else in all of creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
And, For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
Welcome to God's safe shelter.
Petitcodiac Mennonite Church