So Close, So Very Close

We collected about a thousand toothbrushes.  Local dentists donated them by the box full.  Word got out that we were heading to remote villages in sub-Saharan Africa, to Malawi, and toothbrushes are a great gift; they don’t weigh much and make a huge difference.

The difference was a bit of a reality check.  In the early 2000s, the infection rate for AIDs in Malawi was 13%, adjusted for cohort, you are talking ½ of the young adult population.  In remote villages of Malawi where people are subsistence farmers living in extreme poverty, families were lucky to have one toothbrush for everyone to use.  By giving everyone their own toothbrush, or at least every child, perhaps the likelihood of new infections would be lowered.  A toothbrush could save a young life—a good thing to bring, to give.

We had about a thousand of these and were in the lakeshore village of Chivumu and our team of four was handing them out to the hundreds of children who gathered at the site where we were building a primary school.  Never would I have imagined that a toothbrush could cause such excitement, but this was wildly popular.  Children held their toothbrush like they had won a trophy. 

In the midst of the excitement, the local pastor came and said, “we have a problem.  The chief was not given a toothbrush.”  This baffled me.  I thought here we are building a school in your village, and you’re upset that you didn’t get a toothbrush.  And how embarrassing would that have been, how condescending in my mind to hand a toothbrush to the chief.  I would never have thought of such a thing.

What I didn’t get in the translation was this: the chief didn’t want a toothbrush.  He wanted all the toothbrushes.  Once they were given to him, we could then hand them out.  But if they don’t come through him, then he is no longer the chief.  By not including him, I was in essence chief for the day. 

This was my second trip to Africa, and it was in this moment that I began to see: I really don’t know what I am doing here.  This is a really different place.  The culture of village and chief is something I have no ability to navigate.  We were able to fix it; I made a short speech and offered a mound of toothbrushes to him; and all was right.  But it was unsettling. You don’t know what you are doing.

This was the first of three important lessons from my second trip to Malawi.  What I saw that day was all about good intensions.  Beware of good intensions if you don’t know where you are. 

I was reminded of this trip when I read our parable today because this teaching of Jesus is a warning, an ominous warning, about good intentions.  The king wants to have a banquet for his son who is going to be married.  He invites guests and awaits news of their availability.  This is a good thing.  What could go wrong?  What a nice offer.  To be invited by a king to a banquet is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Got a toothbrush for you right here.  What could be the problem?

And that is the problem with good intensions.  Something goes wrong.  Something happens you don’t expect.  The people revolt at the invitation.  There is violence and then more violence.  The king burns their cities to the ground.

In a parable the unexpected is meant to get our attention.  This is odd; stop here and look.  When I heard the chief wanted a toothbrush that didn’t make sense. I stopped what I was doing and looked into it. If someone is invited to a banquet by a king, they shouldn’t respond with violence.  And if someone turns down an invitation, you shouldn’t burn their city to the ground.  Somethings not quite right here.

The next day on our trip there was another moment like the toothbrushes.  The YMCA asked if we could bring soccer balls to the villages we visit as a gift from them.  Knowing what soccer is to the children in Malawi we were excited to take them, uninflated of course.  The Y provided a few pumps as well.

When we reached the village the next day deep in the bush, we were greeted by the head teacher at the school and their chief and the pastor.  As we talked, I spied a young boy who seemed to linger.  Ah, hah, I thought, here is a young boy in need of soccer ball.  Wouldn’t this be the greatest day for him?  Wouldn’t he feel so happy to be given a brand-new soccer ball? 

I stepped away from the meet and greet and took a ball from the back of the cruiser and offered it to the young boy.  His eyes became enormous, and I was about to tell him, “This is for you,” when the head teacher swooped between us, grabbed the ball from the young boy and said to him, “you must go.  You go.”  The young boy quickly ran away.

The teacher sensed my confusion and my frustration and pointed to two older boys who were also standing nearby.  He said, “you see those boys, they will beat the young boy and take this ball.  And you see those boys?”  There were a group of even older boys at a distance.  “Those boys will beat them and take the ball.”  And pointing again he said, “you see that boy there?”  I nodded.  “He will beat them, and it will be his ball.  If you give the ball to me all these boys will get to play football, and no one will get hurt.”

Huh.  Okay.  Deep breath.  Now it wasn’t just offence I was bringing to the village it was danger.  I could sense the violence my good intention might bring.  Never could I have imagined such a threat.  I am really out of my depth; this was so hard to imagine. 

It’s hard to imagine why the people were so opposed to the banquet.  And we could speculate as to why, but it is fairly certain that they really didn’t like the king and the king really didn’t know it.  Or their disdain for him was being cajoled or placated or maybe he was offering an olive branch.  Whatever it was it didn’t work.  The nice offer, the gift of the banquet was not a gift, but something people saw as a danger or insult or something worth fighting over. 

Again, the only thing that is really clear is that the king had no idea of what was about to happen.  Things went sideways and it was a surprise to him.  He was not ready for how little he understood the people. We can see this when he says, round both the good and the evil.  In other words, just find people to fill the hall.  He didn’t know people; he didn’t have friends.

Before we left the US one member of the church brought many bags of Mardi gras beads to our team as we were packing the trunks for Malawi.  These will be popular he said.  I remember being disgusted.  Really, I am bringing wampum, shiny beads to the villages?  This was not a good idea.  But it was one of those moments where the boxes were being packed and I was unprepared to express my concern; it all happened so fast— so in they went.

On the third day of our trip into the bush, at yet another village, a fight broke out near our cruiser.  I could see two of our team in the midst of a melee.  There was shouting and fighting and a bit of a mob.  One of the group decided to break open the Mardi gras beads and share them with the ladies of the village.  It turns out the most coveted of all the gifts we brought in 2006 was Mardi gras beads.  Folks were fighting over them. 

Just as the scene reached a dangerous level an elderly woman, a kind of jedi warrior wielding a wooden staff, descended upon the mob.  She wacked and jabbed and pushed until there was a perfect line.  No more fighting.  I will never forget when her eyes met mine.  Even at a distance I could feel the message: are you all crazy?

Maybe we were. Whether or not we were crazy, we were well intended.  Just wanted offer something nice. Equal match to our good intention was our lack of understanding.  I realized we needed a guide, a friend to show us the lay of the land.  After the Mardi gras beads, I saw the light.  You need people to navigate this water for you, to guide you. We needed friends and mentors and faithful partners.

The king didn’t have this in the parable.  He is terribly alone.  People do his bidding or rebel from his bidding, but no one talks to him, no one counsels him.  Not even his son is part of the dialogue. 

In the end of the parable the king is just as mistaken as he was in the beginning.  He evicts a stranger for being less than what he expected.  He seems to make the same mistake over and over again.  He is well intended; he is trying to give a gift to people, but he doesn’t know them, has little understanding of the people he wants to gift.

I was in and out of Africa and Malawi for a decade.  The early lessons of the toothbrush and the soccer ball and the Mardi gras beads served me well and were a consistent reminder: you don’t really know where you are or what you are doing or what people really need. This posture of humility was a guide to help me navigate the world of extreme poverty.  Yet, these lessons and the many more that I stumbled into in villages didn’t stay there.  Ultimately they reached my every day.

What I came to realize, after a time, like our parable, is that for the most part we tend to be well intended, but not necessarily well informed.  We assume a lot about people and like the king in the parable, the outcome sometimes is a bit of a miss. 

The chances are good that we too often live this parable like the king.  We have good intentions; we have ideas of who people are and what they want; and, we have expectations about what people will do.  We may not burn any cities to the ground, but we do get burned, find confusion were there was pure intent, disdain where that had been good will because we don’t really know people. 

Consider for just a moment the people around you.  Some you know, some you don’t.  There may be a few people in this sanctuary you truly know, but there are far more that you have only an impression, an idea.  Consider the rarified air of this sanctuary.  Here is a place where you actually could know people, could have a profound relationship, friendship.  In the end, what I realized with the toothbrush and the soccer ball and the Mardi gras beads is that the potential for confusion was just as true here as it was there.  Confusion is just easier to see in the villages of sub-Saharan Africa.

The parable of the banquet can serve as a reminder of good intentions.  Beware of them.  Even more it begs a great question: how much do we know the people around us, with us?  Even the people who are so close, so very close, how much do we know of their heart, their hopes, their needs?  And how much of what we do is based simply on an impression, an image?  What a different banquet if the king had known the people, knew his friends, knew his community. Our parable today begs the same question: how different a church would be, a community be where the people knew and understood one another.  Amen.