by Winton Boyd
Despite the current cold snap, these are rich and warm days. It was a pleasure and an honor to lead a group of 29 to the Dominican Republic last week to work with Habitat for Humanity. Each of us had a powerful time, even if it was in different ways. As I Mentioned in my sermon on Sunday, no two people experience the same event the same way – as evidenced by the pictures we take. My camera had many pictures of the work site and a Marenge band (traditional Dominican music) that greeted us when we arrived in the city of Nagua on Sunday night. My daughter’s camera had a host of pictures of high school kids playing games in the evenings and many more pictures of the countryside.
However, one event that moved all of us occurred at a Wednesday worship service in a little church a couple of blocks from our hotel. The pastor invited us to join this weekly service. He and several members of his church had joined us at the work site the day before. The church is associated with the Assemblies of God and is very charismatic. They had festive and loud music, energetic singing and quite a bit of spontaneous praying out loud. Pastor Ramon invited me to preach and our group to sing. I was delighted to work with Ruthanne Landsness as my interpreter and found preaching to non-English speaking Christians to be both challenging and exciting. Tammy Boyd and Ruthanne taught our group several songs and prepared three for the service. We knew that our second song was well known among Dominican Christians (Alabare a mi Senor). Indeed, the congregation joined in and we “rocked†together for several minutes. We had chosen to close the service with Sanctuary (“Lord, prepare me, to be a sanctuary…) that we have sung often here at ORUCC. We didn’t know our hosts knew this song too. As we sang in English, there arose a joyful and prayerful chorus in Spanish. For several minutes, Christians from Madison, USA and Nagua, DR united in song, prayer, and praise. Instinctively, we grabbed hands and raised them together in gratitude and amazement. Across all language and cultural barriers, we found a common language of prayer. Despite vast differences in theology and doctrine, we found a common language of hope. Despite the inability of most of us to converse together, we found brothers and sisters in Christ. Despite all the planning and preparation that went into the trip, it was the surprising and unplanned moment of the Spirit that astounded us.
The experience brought to mind the words of Krista Tippet in her book, Speaking of Faith, which I was reading while on the trip; “The reality of God is most powerfully expressed not in ideas and proclamations but in presence.†In that small little chapel last week, our group felt both the presence of the Spirit and the presence of brothers and sisters we had never met.
The promise of Easter as we read the gospels is the promise of presence. We read story after story of Jesus showing up, being with and among his friends. His time for teaching and preaching was mostly past. He promised a future – not of right thinking – but of presence “I will be with you always.†Might this season of Easter be a time for us to renew our willingness to be present to ourselves, our friends, our colleagues, and the Spirit in our lives? Might we breath deeply and listen to what is happening or being said around us? Can we give thanks that we are not all alike, but able to be present with and for one another nonetheless?
