Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. Martha Koenig Stone

January 17, 2010 – Second Sunday after Epiphany

“Beulah Land”

With today’s Old Testament reading, we get a lesson in biblical Hebrew! Several of the words used in the text have footnotes that give the Hebrew word. The text describes the time after the exile in Babylon, when the people have returned to their land, rebuilt their lives and rediscovered their heritage, returning to their faith in God. It compares God’s relationship to the land and people of Israel to a marriage relationship. God loves the people and the land so much, that they receive new names to remind them of this love. Now, instead of being called “forsaken” (azubah in Hebrew), the people will be called “my delight is in her” (hephzibah). And instead of being called “desolate” (shemamah), the land will now be called “married” (beulah). I love this passage because it reminds me of a member of the first church I served, whose name was Beulah, who explained to me that her name means married! But I also love this vision of the love between God and the people—a vision of joy and intimacy. It’s a vision that caught the imagination of African Americans in this country during the time of slavery, as they envisioned what it would be like to be free. And so the term “Beulah Land” has come to symbolize freedom and safety and union with God, both in this life and forever. Listen then to the text from Isaiah 62:1-5.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
   and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
   and her salvation like a burning torch.
²The nations shall see your vindication,
   and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
   that the mouth of the Lord will give.
³You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
   and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
⁴You shall no more be termed “Forsaken,” azubah ^*
   and your land shall no more be termed “Desolate;” shemamah ^*
but you shall be called “My Delight Is in Her,” hephzibah^*
   and your land “Married;” beulah^*
for the Lord delights in you,
   and your land shall be married.
⁵For as a young man marries a young woman,
   so shall your builder^* marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
   so shall your God rejoice over you.

This week in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, a massive earthquake devastated the city of Port au Prince. Homes, schools, hospitals, government buildings—destroyed. The beautiful presidential palace—shattered. At least a hundred thousand people are dead, and those who have survived have no food or water. The images that we’ve seen in the news this week are the opposite of Beulah Land. They’re more like hell on earth.

Why do things like this happen? What’s the cause? What’s the reason? What’s the purpose, if there is a purpose? And why should this happen in Haiti, of all places, where the people are so vulnerable and the infrastructures of society are so frail, where generations of slavery, bad government and poverty have left the people in ruin? How do you look at a tragedy like this and make any sense of it?

Some Christian leaders have suggested that natural disasters like this are God’s punishment for sin. It’s an idea that comes up over and over again in the Bible—in stories where the biblical writers explain the death of an individual or the destruction of a city as God’s punishment for evil behavior. This “divine punishment” idea is embedded deep in our culture. Think about it for a minute: you’ve probably had a time when you felt as though you or someone you know were being punished by a kind of divine judgment. “How could I have let this happen? I should have… if she had only…why didn’t you…?” And sometimes there really are direct consequences of what we do that can seem like punishment: smoke cigarettes, your lungs are damaged. Sleep too little, you become tired and run down. And if someone does wrong by you, you may even find yourself wishing for divine punishment of that person—some payback, some vindication! This is the kind of world view that feeds the remarks of religious leaders like Pat Robertson, who said this week that the earthquake in Haiti is God’s punishment for making a “pact with the devil”—referring to the practice of an ancient religion called vodou in Haiti (or voodoo, as it has come to be known in English). In Robertson’s mind, God is punishing the Haitians for overthrowing the western-style rule of the French, and for simply having the “wrong” kind of faith.

Still, we know that there are plenty of times when someone does something absolutely horrible and doesn’t seem to have to pay any consequences at all: murders that go unsolved for years; bosses whose business practices are cruel or corrupt; spousal abuse, child abuse…the list goes on. All too often, the most selfish people seem to get the greatest reward, as the rich get richer and richer.

We know as well that there are times when good people undergo tragedy that has nothing to do with anything they’ve done or left undone…it just happens. This reality is acknowledged in our scriptural heritage as well. Remember the story of Job, the good and righteous man, who nevertheless suffered catastrophe after catastrophe? No one can say in good conscience that the children of Haiti deserve to have their parents buried in rubble and their city demolished.

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University, specializes in the native religions of Haiti. She explains that, in vodou spirituality, there is an understanding that the world seeks a natural balance…in this view the purpose of an earthquake is to rebalance what has become imbalanced. In an article written for the Washington Post,[1] McAlister tells about the perspective of a man named Erol Josué, a Haitian friend of hers who is a practitioner of vodou—a priest of the spirits, as she calls him. In Haiti, according to Josué, the land is considered to be a woman, the mother of the people. “Mother Haiti wants to know, 'who will make me beautiful, put clothes on me, and take care of my children?' When you mistreat her, and uproot her trees, when you give her too much responsibility, she is like a woman with cancer. The tumor metastasizes, and explodes.” For Josué, McAlister explains, “the earthquake was mother nature, the land of Haiti, rising up to defend herself against the erosion, deforestation, and environmental devastation that have been ongoing for the last few decades.”

It’s certainly true that things have been out of balance for a long time in Haiti. But Haiti is not the only place on earth that has suffered from environmental harm or political unrest or unrelenting poverty. Why should this rebalancing happen only there? Why now?

What do you think? Are natural disasters a form of divine punishment? Or are they a kind of rebalancing of the imbalances that have come about in nature? Are they just a function of the natural world that has nothing to do with spirit or meaning or purpose—just accidents of nature, something to be endured? As Jesus tells his disciples, God “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Some folks might take a more “scientific” view: earthquakes happen when the pressure between two tectonic plates is too great for them to be held in place. It has nothing to do with divine punishment or spiritual balance, it’s just how the physical world works.

But science, after all, doesn’t really try to address the question of “why” things happen, does it? Science is more concerned with the “how” (that is, how things function and what causes things to happen) than with the “why,” (that is, the meaning and purpose of the things that happen).

And so we are left with an unanswered question. Whether you are moved by a Judeo-Christian belief in a God who creates and sustains and controls the whole cosmos, who allows or perhaps causes catastrophe to happen, or by a spiritualist belief in a natural world that seeks balance, or a scientific view of a world that simply follows the laws of physics, no one can say for sure why the world is the way it is.

Maybe the question of “why,” which cannot be answered, is really a distraction from a much more important question. Perhaps the question we should be asking is, “What next?” When unspeakable, unexplainable tragedy comes, what vision, what plan of action does your faith inspire? That’s the question I pondered as I looked at the Isaiah text for today.

Israel, in the time leading up to this text, has been a lot like Haiti. The people of Israel have suffered terribly—not from natural disasters, but from several generations of exile, devastation, and subjugation. They have lived at the bottom of the economic heap. They have felt forsaken and desolate, and they have assumed that they are being punished for bad behavior. Even after Cyrus of Persia liberated them from their Assyrian captors, and they had the chance to return home, there was a time when they complained that they had not heard the voice of God for much too long.

But now, Isaiah offers a new understanding of their relationship with God. He sees God saying to the people of Israel, “I love you! Like a married couple, you and I belong together. You belong to me, and I belong to you, and my delight is in you. Those other nations who have looked down on you—they’ll see now that I love you and that you are blessed!” Never mind, for a moment, the problematic definitions of marriage in Isaiah’s time, or in our time; here the relationship is one of mutual love, affection, and affirmation between God and the people, God and the land. This is the relationship that God has promised—this is what God desires for the land and the people.

What would it take for Haiti to see itself as a place that is beloved by God? What would turn that poor island nation into Beulah Land? What kind of transformation would be needed in order for the nations to see the vindication of Haiti?

Rush Limbaugh suggested this week that there’s no need to send aid to Haiti, because we already donate to Haiti through our tax dollars. Those 92 cents per person—that’s enough!

Some folks may try to make a profit from the tragedy—I read this week that you make a charitable contribution using a credit card, some of the credit card companies charge a 3% transaction fee, even though that is far more than what it costs them to process the donations.

And some folks say that there’s nothing we can do anyway—tragedy will keep on happening, it’s the way of the world—just do your best to keep your own head above water and try to come out on top. Even Jesus said at one time, “You always have the poor with you” (John 12:8).

But Jesus also called us to reach out to those in need, and to build communities of equity and justice, the kind of community that has been lacking in Haiti for a long time. The tragedy of the earthquake calls us to account for the much longer tragedy of corruption and greed that has kept Haiti impoverished year after year, generation after generation.

In one of this week’s daily e-mail devotionals sent out by our denomination, Anthony Robinson, compares an earthquake that in his home town, with the one in Haiti: “In Seattle, where I live, a February 28, 2001 earthquake measured 6.8 on the Richter scale…there was property damage, but no loss of life. The January 11, 2010 earthquake in Haiti measured 7.0 on the same scale…Two earthquakes of almost the same magnitude have had such different effects. In Seattle, we were shook up and our earthquake-proofed buildings were set swaying. In Haiti everything in sight has fallen down and tens of thousands of human beings have been crushed. Lord, it's not just a beyond-our-control, ‘natural evil’ that's happened this week. The brick-hard truth is that the Haitian earthquake has been so devastating because it has been piled on top of years of poverty and corruption, exploitation and indifference.”[2]

God knows, there’s a lot of work to do in Haiti. And I’m not naive enough to think that the financial gifts we send will fix all of their problems. But the promise of “Beulah Land” keeps calling out to me. When our president says, to the people of Haiti, “You will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten,” I hear an echo of the words of Isaiah, and I feel a sense of hope and a sense of purpose. And when two past presidents of different parties get in on the act, I start to feel excited! I may not know why God lets earthquakes happen, but I know why I have to do my best to help people who are in trouble: I want to help build Beulah Land. I want the land and the people—every land and all people—to know themselves as beloved by God and united with God in a love for the whole cosmos.

This week, our nation celebrates the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who exposed the inequities of our own land, and gave us a new vision toward which we would strive—a vision of “the beloved community,” as he called it, in which everyone loves and is beloved, everyone is treated with respect, and everyone has enough. And so it seems fitting that this week, in the wake of the tragedy in Haiti, we would rededicate ourselves to building up that beloved community, both at home and abroad. I keep thinking of the Negro spiritual I learned and sang with my brother’s church choir at the UCC General Synod last year:

Way over in Beulah Land, way over in Beulah Land,

We’re gonna have a good time, way over in Beulah Land!

We’re gonna drink that holy wine, we’re gonna break that holy bread, We’re gonna walk those golden streets, way over in Beulah Land!

Let us pray: O God, “Grant that we may hear, in the cries of the grieving, the lamentations of your prophets. Grant that in their suffering, we might discern your summons to repentance, your call for a more just human order. Strengthen the rescuers, uphold the grieving, sustain the weary, and cause the money and aid now given to speedily reach those in deepest need, in Christ's name.”2 Amen.

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[1] McAlister, Elizabeth: “Voodoo's View of the Quake in Haiti,” Washington Post, Jan. 15, 2010, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/voodoos_view_of_the_quake_in_haiti.html.

2 Robinson, Anthony. “Prayers for Haiti,” UCC Stillspeaking Devotional for January 15, 2010, http://act.ucc.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=22881.0&dlv_id=25401.