Was It Worth It?

 

 

Some years ago I was traveling in the back hill country of Jamaica, visiting the subsistence farmers with whom we had a goat project… a very poor area, though close in miles, far removed culturally and economically from the prosperous resorts on the beaches of Jamaica.

As we came around a corner we happened upon an old stone church which I knew was a Moravian church, because it was the Moravians who had come from Europe as missionaries to the Caribbean several centuries before.  So, I wanted to stop for a visit and learn a bit about this church. 

Inside the church I met an old Jamaican pastor who graciously greeted me and told me about his parish and the people in his flock – very poor people.  After a few minutes he said, “come outside, to the back of the church, - I want to show you something”.  What he showed me were several gravestones with some markings and dates – I don’t remember the details.  But he said, “These were the first Moravian missionaries that came to Jamaica more than 150 years ago. There is a whole family buried here”. 

They came here to bring the good news of the Gospel, but they died within a year or two from malaria – the whole family. They had not established a single congregation… did not accomplish much before they were struck down.  But within a year they were replaced by another family, and the work went on so that today there is a Moravian church throughout the Caribbean.” 

The old pastor looked at me and asked, “What do you think?  What is the meaning of their lives? Was it worth it? Was their sacrifice worth it?”  I did not answer, nor did he give me his.  But his questions stuck with me – and have come back to me many times over the years. I think about these questions now as I look back on life and a long journey of work among the poor in many places. 

Over the last months we have been remembering our time back in a village in Vietnam in the 60s, where Judy and I served with Vietnam Christian Service, spending our first year in the village of DiLinh in the highlands.

If we are honest about it, Judy and I would have to say that we didn’t accomplish much that was lasting in DiLinh.  It was an unstable time, a time of war when the lives on many of the Ko’ho, the mountain people we worked with, were severely disrupted by the bombing and fighting in the mountains in that area. We started the work, had some small projects, Judy worked in the local hospital, a daunting challenge to say the least, and I started a marketing project of local handicrafts. There were some agricultural projects, etc.

One of our successors, Ted Studebaker, of the Church of the Brethren, doing alternative service as a conscientious objector to war, was killed in 1969 when a battle engulfed the village on terrible night and Ted died in the same bedroom we had occupied during our time in DiLinh.  He had only served there for about a year but we heard that the local people had grown to love him for his bright and loving spirit. More recently others have gone back and looked for some evidence of the lasting effect of the work he (and we) did there but have not found many results of what any of us did over the years of that project.  Some might ask, “What did Ted (and we) accomplish?  Was it worth it?”

And this was not the only time I wondered if we were accomplishing much.. We all want to make a difference with our lives --- And so I came to think about that time in the highlands of South Vietnam as a "ministry of presence". Sometimes it is just important to be there.  Many of you know this if you have worked in medical professions or as pastors, social workers, or in our roles as caring members of families and communities.

I suspect that you often found that being with another who is suffering in mind, body or spirit, staying present with those who have suffered loss – being there is what is most needed at the time.  Later when I worked with Lutheran World Relief in South America, we developed a name for that approach - we called it accompaniment.

Looking back, I have no regrets about not accomplishing as much as our programs and organizations sometimes said we did. I do take much pleasure in having worked with organizations whose foundational values were based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. We knew we were to go to and accompany people in their need – we were asked to go and "be there", and see if there was something we could offer. 

So now, perhaps my answer to the old Jamaican pastor is, “Yes, it was worth it then, and still worth it now!”  What do you think?