Robert Mayer
MONTGOMERY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH “YOU WILL BE KNOWN!” 2/15/2015
At about 3:45 am the giant cane trucks rumble to life. If you’ve never seen a cane truck, imagine the cab of a big 18-wheeler hooked to three hoppers that stand empty and ready to be filled with harvested sugar cane. They look like a three car train, and they are noisy, because they are embarking on a journey from the cane-processing factory to the fields some ten miles away, and all that loose unfilled metal clanks and creaks as the giant engine grinds up the hill past the Hotel Maria Christina.
If you are staying there as I was this past week, the road is a mere 20 feet from my head, and the giant engines and clanking metal and drivers, believe it or not, honking good morning to their cane brethren, make for ample reminders that daylight is coming at some time in the near future.
As if to confirm this, the donkey nearby starts to bray, and then the roosters start in, and it seems like everyone in the neighborhood owns a rooster. It’s the rooster chorus. And did I forget the monkeys that the innkeeper put in the nearby trees, thinking we American guests here in Honduras would find them interesting. They may be interesting, but screeching at 5 in the morning is not a preferred form of entertainment.
When you do tumble out of bed, it’s to a cold shower if you can stand it. The innkeeper assures that next year he’ll have solar heating, but alas, I am here today, this year, 2015, so that is a future dream that will do me no good. And there is no showerhead, because I’m assured that the local guests prefer an open pipe, or if they like the showerhead, they just take it home with them. But after some negotiation we do get a showerhead, which only serves to diffuse the cold water for greater shock value.
I’m here in Honduras on a Living Waters for the World project for the town of Quebrada Grande, in the sugar cane region east and slightly south of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras.
It’s taken almost a year of work to get all the permits, construction, electricity, team, and system ready for installation. For we are about to bring pure water to Quebrada Grande.
Despite the challenges in getting these projects done (there are almost 700 systems around the world now), cold water and all, the good news is that this village is excited, and that you can get a hotel room here for $14.50 a night including 2 meals, and 13 of us have assembled from the US and Honduras to get the water system up and running in the next week, including educating the community about the need for pure water and how to best use this precious commodity.
In the morning we all meet for breakfast community, or you might say at the innkeepers table, altogether to prepare for the day building and constructing and sharing with the community leaders of Quebrada Grande.
And in the evening, supper is also served at the long table in the innkeeper’s dining room, and there is gratitude for the progress of the day and stories to tell, and a good deal of fellowship laughter. (If you don’t have hot water, you might as well laugh about it)
You find that the team understands their roles and moves ahead to make sure their work is clear and helpful. You watch the water system take shape in the water room the town has specially prepared for the new system. Since Living Waters bases their training on preparing the local citizens to run the system, a “trainer train the trainer “ method, you watch the local people selected to run the system put the system together and watch their pride grow at the same time.
And some of us, myself included, have a mission to go off and look at other possible sites for the next water system. That’s our job, get out of the way of the engineers and plumbers after setting up the whole trip and get out in the country and see who else needs a clean water system, which, frankly, is almost every place in Honduras.
At the end of the day, what do the people of Quebrada Grande know about us other than we are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church? They know that we came to bring them clean water, that without guile or ulterior motive, we came to try and make life a little better for a village in Honduras.
And what did we find there. Families with beautiful children, clean and happy, smiling and playful, grateful for what they have, and willing to work together to make this world a little more friendly. They were musical and curious, willing to learn how things might be a little better even though there were few cars, no big flat screen TV’s, and mostly no glass in the windows.
But here’s the thing. All you have to do in these villages is turn on the water, the clean water made by the system they built, and there is no need to say much more, because if they stick with it, the instance of gastric distress in children, of parasites, of typhoid, of all sorts of bad water distress, can be and will be eliminated, and the production of clean water gives the village another enterprise that is self sustaining, as they can sell the water, yes, for nominal prices, but enough to keep the system running.
So these villagers know us as the people who brought the clean water, not so much as successful executives, or flight attendants on major airlines, or financial wizards, or product strategists, and we know them as people who are grateful for the partnership, not as ministers, cane workers, farmers or mayors of the town, or members of the water committee.
We are fellow humans with the same love of our children, the same desire for health and the same sense that maybe in this crazy world, things can get a little better a day at a time despite events that seem senseless, like shooting and killing people over a parking space.
And so on this Transfiguration Sunday, it seems relevant to ask yourself, how will you be known,,,,how are you known?
In the reading from Kings, Elisha chooses to follow Elijah rather than do exactly what Elijah requests, to stay behind as Elijah moves from place to place...listen again to the word of God...
“Elijah said to Elisha...stay here please...for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel...but Elisha said...as the Lord lives and as you yourself live...I will not leave you...so they went down to Bethel...”
And the same thing happens two more times, and it becomes known that soon the Lord will take Elijah home to heaven and Elisha asks....
When you die....”please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me...”
And Elijah frankly replies “You have asked a hard thing...nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you it shall be so for you, but if not, it shall not be so”
And of course it turns out to be so, for Elijah is taken away in the sight of Elisha.
You would be tempted to think of Elisha as someone who stayed the course, hoping for the best, hoping to have the good spirit of Elijah and more, and by staying the course he is rewarded.
And we move to the Transfiguration story in Mark. How will Jesus, Peter, James, John, how will they be known?
As Jesus became radiant and is seen talking with Moses and Elijah, long dead to the earthly world, the apostles became terrified and Peter suggests building a temple for them, but Jesus came alone from the transfiguration cloud and told them that they should all say nothing about what they had seen until the Son of Man rises again from the dead.
Jesus asks the apostles, and us, to be people of faith, not people of dramatic stories or people of exclusion who are one up on others because of what they know or have been giving.
How are we to be known? It seems a particularly relevant question in a world that looks increasingly secular and increasingly filled with violent and hateful events.
While I was away, the story broke that Brian Williams, the respected news anchor of NBC, who was making $10 million a year, had embellished a story about his part in a helicopter mission in the middle east, claiming that he had been riding in a chopper that was forced down by hostile action.
It turned out not to be true and the fallout has been extreme. Williams has been suspended without pay, has been pilloried and mocked, and in this world of surveys and polls, has gone from being one of the most respected people in America to one of the most mocked and discredited.
There is something deeply ironic about the fact that the man who is supposed to be telling us the news decided that he also should be the man who is making up the news to his own benefit, to his own view of courage, to his own standards of adventure, and to his own view of how he should be known.
That is the challenge for us all, my friends, whether we like it or not. To live as best we can to reflect the Christian values we are so thankful for, not creating a persona of how we would like to be known, but living a life that weaves the story of the way we will be known.
And there is always that reminder that humility is a wonderful part of the faith journey, as Jesus reminds the apostles when he tells them to tell no one what they have seen until He rises from the dead.
The thought of wearing the world as a loose garment occurs to me. When you go into a new place, a new project, a new village, there is always the take of the first impression.
In Honduras, when we visited the potential site of a new water system, a town in the mountains called Guatemalita, literally little Guatemala, we went to the local church to meet the water committee and the congregation and answer questions through the help of our translator, an energetic young woman named Ninette. At one point, one of the ladies wanted to get an opinion from me, and she couldn’t remember my name, Roberto, so she said something else, and pointed to me.
There was some light laughter as she spoke, and Ninette asked me if I wanted her to translate, and I said yes,,, and Ninette said “They are calling you “the handsome man....”
Well, you can imagine....I was filled with pride and glad they were not calling me some awful gringo curse, and I thought Wow what a good nickname to have, and I should probably move here for a while, if I wanted my ego repaired or reinforced...and everyone else in our own party smiled politely and had a good chuckle.....
First impressions will give way to lasting memories, however, and we need to remember this.
In Honduras, if the people of Guatemalita call the people of Quebrada Grande, they will find out they we left the village with a completed water system, that we will follow up to make sure the system works well, that we ended the week with a celebration of our mutual faith in Christ, and that we learned once again that the greater human family, in the end, wants the same things that are the foundation of Christian faith.
Safety, enough to eat, health, an attitude of gratitude, the brother hood and sister hood of human respect, and a willingness to share the fruits of our labor.
