August 10, 2015
Whenever we're in Haiti, we spend the last night of talking and reflection taking communion together. And I don't like it.
After spending days, weeks, with these children we've come to know and love and be in unique and holy relationship with, it feels wrong to leave them, go back to a house where we know we have enough food and water and often power, and partake in communion by ourselves.
So this year, I decided we wouldn't. If we were going to celebrate communion, we'd do it with everyone, all 100 children at the House of Hope.
There would be challenges here, as this community in La Pointe, Haiti was entirely Baptist, and their understanding of communion was different than ours. So I told the orphanage directors my desire, and we came up with a compromise.
Because only baptized children could celebrate communion, and because they baptize only children older than 13, who had decided themselves to be baptized, we would invite anyone who was able and wanting to the table after our worship time together on that last night.
It was a hard compromise. I practice an open table, inviting anyone who wishes to partake to do so. That's important to me, as we believe that our sacraments are an outward sign of an inner grace, than I have to believe that God is working in and through people in ways I'll never know. If someone wants to come to Jesus's table, I won't be the one to stop them.
And so with this compromise making me feel better than I did when our mission teams celebrated communion by ourselves, and not so good as I would have felt if we could serve everyone, we worshiped. The kids sang and spoke in a language we still couldn't understand, but did so with a soul we shared.
But then I noticed the older kids carrying something into the center of our space. It was the communion table I had set up in the other room. Complete with a white sheet as a table cloth, Haitian sweet bread we purchased in the market, a bottle of Manischewitz someone had found, and a communion tray one of the directors had received from a church years ago with hopes of doing this very thing we were about to do.
I ran over to one of the directors and asked her what was going on. As is often the response at a Haitian orphanage, she shook her head and said, no idea, roll with it.
And so we did. I pried Shed Love off of my shoulders, and stood behind this wobbly table, suddenly aware of myself. Sweat was dripping from all my pores in the 108 degree heat, and the pee spot left on my side by the boy I had been carrying caused my shirt to stick to me. And with a karaoke system microphone and one of the directors to translate, I looked out on the faces of these 100 children.
I began to tell them the story of the last supper, more aware now than I had ever been of how that story goes. On Jesus's last night with his disciples, he didn't take them to a lofty place, a fancy place. He didn't indulge them with secrets of mystery and plans for the future. He took them to a common table. And they ate many of the foods we've been eating. Rice and breads and simple meats. And by one account, he washed their feet. They didn't have shoes either, and their feet were dirty and tired, and so he washed them. And when it came time, he took some bread and blessed it, and he broke it saying his body would be broken like this bread. And he took some wine, and called it the new covenant, and he said he blood would be shed like this wine. And he told them it was for them, for their sins, and their forgiveness. And he told them to do this after he was gone, and remember him.
And the children sat captivated while the translator and I shared the mic. And they watched with hungry eyes while I broke the bread, and thirsty lips while I poured the cup, and their little feet moved in the dirt as they realized they aren't the first without shoes, and there were tears as I spoke of forgiveness and remembering.
And channeling some Godly creativity and old memories of being in Catholic churches, I invited everyone forward, instructing the ones who were not yet baptized to hold their hands like they were praying, and I'd give them a blessing instead of the bread and wine.
And they came. They walked forward. Some missing limbs. Some fighting diseases, curable and not. Some pushed in wheelchairs. Some were carried, mentally unable to understand and brought forward by friends who did.
And to each one of them I said, "Child of God..."
But when Davens reached me, his four year old hands placed perfectly in prayer, his young eyes filled with old things looking up at me, I couldn't hold it anymore and I started to cry. I touched his forehead, the precious forehead of a boy healthy but not wanted, and said again, "Davens, Child of God, may God bless you and keep you all the days of your life."
Wendji couldn't help it, and though his 6 year old hands were held in prayer, his eyes went to the loaf of bread, his malnourished body trembling as he walked closer, so I snuck him a big chunk of bread, and said again, "Child of God..."
And then Jamesly approached, a friend pushing his wheelchair, and he bowed his head. The smell of the wound on his leg reached my nose as he did, the stench coming through his bandage as flies lingered. And I touched the forehead of his 15-year-old boy, blessing him for what might be his last time as he prepares for his death from a cancer the hospital isn't equipped to treat. "Jamesly, Child of God, may God bless you and keep you all the days of your life..."
And when Shed Love was brought forward, the boy previously attached to me, whose pee was still wetting my side, he didn't care about lines or formality, and he leaped into my arms, reoccupying the place I had previously removed him. Smiling and waving his head as he likes to do, as older kids tried to contain him. But there is no containing a 5-year-old traumatic brain injury child, discarded by family for being too much work in his disabled (read: specially abled) state. And so I squeezed him tight, and named him, "Shed Love, Child of God..." and he squealed in excitement.
And when we were almost done one of my youngest missionaries ran forward, holding a boy she wanted to make sure wasn't left out. Kiky, who arrived the same day we did, who looked no more than two, but was actually at least six. The child that had been so malnourished and neglected, he had never learned to walk, or talk. He had never grown. And now held by hands who loved him, we said together, "Kiky, Child of God..."
And every one of these broken, discarded, redeemed, holy children came forward. And some ate and drank. But most were blessed. And all were called "Child of God."
And we cried. The unbaptized were baptized this night by the tears of a Miami mission team who loved them beyond our own comprehension, in a way that only God can be responsible for. We were baptized by the drool, and pee, and throw up of children who didn't usually have people to clean them. To hold them. To love them. And the words "Chid of God" have never had such meaning, as when addressed to kids who have no other parent, but the grace of God. And these words have never had such meaning, as we addressed ourselves, hearts broken open through this experience, weeping as children because of what God has done.
We believe that Christ shows up when we come to the table together, but it's hard for me to see him some of the time. In our church with the ornate table and rehearsed elders and systematic lines. I'm sure Jesus is there, but he's harder to see in the routine.
On this night, Jesus was not hard to see. Jesus drenched these children and us in a presence too great to understand then, or process now. I hadn't expected or planned to do this. That table appeared, and God took over. I do believe that's how God most often works. I continue to struggle with why God has called me to this work that allows me to experience such things, these times where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, including myself. I don't know why God has called me, or how God continues to equip me, I just know that God does. For now, that is enough.
This is Shed Love. He was dropped off at the Beraca Medical Center orphanage by an aunt who knew something was wrong, but didn't know what. As far as doctors can tell, he suffered a head injury of some kind as a young child, which has left him unable to speak with great learning difficulties and digestion issues (because of muscle control in his esophagus). He is easily distressed, but also easily comforted with human touch and holding. Now 7, he's made Beraca his home, as no one has ever returned to get him. A great majority of my time in Haiti is spent carrying Shed Love around. It is a holy privilege.