Fifth Sunday of Lent 2019
Fifth Sunday of Lent/ S.H. “Keep Your Eyes on What is Front of You”
Driving a car has changed a lot over the last few years. Many of us remember having to back up. We would crane our necks, straining to look over our shoulder to see what was behind us. Now new cars have a camera on the bumper with a screen on the dash board. We get television pictures that show us what is behind us, but we still see a lot of cars with scrapes, dents, dings on the rear end so things have not necessarily gotten safer.
One thing that we notice about this modern convenience is that the camera stays on, showing what is behind us, until we put the car in drive to move forward. And then it clicks off. But there is that moment before the screen goes blank when we see what is ahead of us as well as what is behind us. The moment is very distracting. We’re torn at what to look at, but then the camera goes off and we concentrate on what is in front of us.
The scriptures we read today could point to that experience. We’re reminded, “Not to be distracted by what is behind us. We are to put most of our energy on looking forward to where we hope to go in life.”
Much is being written this month about one of the most tragic events in the history of the world. The even would cause anyone to question the basic goodness of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, this month, in Rwanda there was an act of genocide that shocked the world.
The depth of the barbarity was staggering. 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. 95,000 children were left orphaned. The two groups that were involved in the bloodshed were the ethnic Tutsis and Hutus. For a hundred days the two groups attacked each other, mostly with clubs and machetes. The great powers stood by, seemingly, helpless to stop the carnage. At the end of the day, the world asked why?
On the anniversary of this tragic event, three young Tutsi men who lost their parents have been trying to process the grief and sadness they feel. Their first names are Gadi, Mussa and Bizimana. The men are photographers. And they are taking pictures of the many shrines that have popped up around the country to remember the dead. Also, they are interviewing people on both sides of the conflict. The three of them have even sat down with some of the convicted killers, men who may have killed their parents. The orphans have asked the murderers, why?
And the killers relate how the minority Tutsis were portrayed by the Hutu government as less than human. In school the men were taught that the Tutsi were cockroaches that needed to be exterminated. The Tutsi were invaders who were going to take over the country. The men who went on the rampage shared how it was easy to kill when you made your enemy less that human.
Gadi, Mussa and Bizimana have grown in understanding of what blind hatred can do. But they have not stopped their reflection there. The three of them have drawn hope from the virtue some people show like a newly married couple, one the son of a murderer and the other daughter of a victim. The three, draw hope, from the fact that one person was revered by people they interviewed on both sides, a woman who was their angel. Her name was Roz Carr. She was a farmer in Rwanda before the killing, one of the few foreigners in the country. After the killing took place, she returned. At the age of 82 she started an orphanage for the children. She became Gadi, Mussa and Bizimanas’ mother. The young men are processing their grief, anger and hurt. The goal is not to stay in the past, but to find healing so they can move into the future.
We find these sentiments in the first lesson today. The Jewish people are returning to Israel from exile in Babylon. The Assyrians and Babylonians had committed acts of genocide. The goal was to wipe out the Jewish people, to destroy their culture, their religion, to eliminate them.
We can imagine the trauma the people of Israel felt, but they were gong home. The prophet Isaiah encourages the Jewish people not to let the horrible things they had lived through destroy their hope. He says, “Do not lose confidence in the future. He encourages them to move ahead, to rebuild, to trust in God again.
During Lent we are encouraged by Jesus not to let our past failings and sins overwhelm us. Most of us can look back at mistakes we have made, sins we have committed, but what we are told is that there is always new life. We acknowledge the failings in our life, we seek reconciliation, we move forward. And that is the optimism we try to live with as followers of Jesus. St. Paul puts it well, “I forget what lies behind, but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”