St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

Lent IV 2010

The Rt Revd Pierre Whalon

What a privilege for me to be invited to preach here this morning! I wish to thank Canon Giles Fraser for inviting me, and Dean X for agreeing. Last week I was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, preaching at the Cathédrale de la Sainte Trinité, or rather next to the pile of rubble it has become, under some tarps held up by a wooden frame. The reason I was there was to accompany His Grace Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Southern Africa and Canon Robert Butterworth, Secretary of that province, who were visiting Haiti at the request of the head of South Africa’s great non-governmental organization devoted to disaster relief, Gift of the Giver. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori, had asked me to go, as I am the only other French-speaking bishop in our church besides the Bishop of Haiti.

For Haiti is the largest diocese of the church centred in the United States. They have some 120,000 faithful, over 250 schools, as well as hospitals and clinics. I should say, they had. The Diocese of Haiti was the leading light of that nation. Now they confront the destruction of most of their work.

There is a Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion, which links together the four million French-speaking Anglicans around the world. For my sins I was elected president two years ago. I had wanted to go to Haiti as quickly as possible as a result. Bishop Zaché Duracin, the Bishop of Haiti, had asked me to preach last Sunday. As I looked out over the people under those tarps, I had a strong feeling that I should also preach the same sermon today, here in this, the great cathedral of London. I have never given the same sermon twice in the twenty-eight years I have been preaching. But today seems to be a good day to make an exception. So with some necessary changes, this is what I told those people last Sunday at the ruins of the cathedral in Port-au-Prince.

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While Bishop Zaché has asked me to preach today, I must admit to you that words fail me. Archbishop Thabo and I have agreed that we can find no words to describe what we experienced. There is no way for me to give you advice or suggestions. This disaster has left us speechless.

So I can only speak to you of Jesus. Here at least I know I am on terra firma.

So, where was Jesus, on 12 January, at 4:56 PM, during those 36 seconds that turned the life of Haiti, one of the poorest nations on Earth, upside-down?

Let’s begin with a couple of possible answers to this question. Where was Jesus during the earthquake? The atheist might respond that since Jesus died two thousand years ago, if he existed at all, he therefore was not there. This was only the random shifts of tectonic plates, terrible, yes, but at heart without any meaning. Human life has no real meaning and this disaster proves it.

A somewhat less interesting reply came from a poor soul with a big television program in America. He declared that the earthquake was God’s punishment for a deal that the Haitians made with the Devil to expel the French two hundred years ago.

Clearly this enlightened Christian has never read today’s Gospel. “And the eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell upon them,” Jesus asked,  “do you think they were guiltier than all the other inhabitants of Jerusalem?” Obviously not. We should tell this Christian gentleman to start reading the Bible and stop proclaiming such nonsense. Frankly, while I know I will have great sins for which to render account before Christ’s throne one days, and fear that, I wouldn’t want to be that fellow when God asks why he told such lies about him.

But there are other answers to the question, where was Jesus. Well, where is Jesus today? We have gathered today to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. We are obeying Christ’s command to “take, eat; drink this, all of you.” “This is my Body, this my Blood.” Where is Jesus today? We Anglicans believe he is truly present here among us. With us, among us, he is in us.

The great Anglican theologian Richard Hooker, writing in the 16th century, said that we should not argue over the manner in which the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. We are to obey by eating and drinking, not arguing. And he adds this beautiful sentence: “These mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very Cross.” That is, by eating and drinking his Body and Blood we accept his sacrifice for us on the cross, and we join him in it. And we also join him in what follows—his resurrection. For in Christ, the Holy Trinity shares our life, which is subject to suffering, whether from disease and hunger, or from losing one’s job and one’s home. And God lives with us our death, whether by earthquake or cholera, knife crime or terrorist bomb.

So where was Jesus on 12 January, and after, as this disaster becomes worse? He is being born, not in Bethlehem but in a makeshift tent made of some poles and blankets, which will blow away when the monsoon starts next month. Jesus is selling bananas that he’s picked by the side of the road so he can get a few coins to survive another day. He is moving about us, crawling on legs amputed when his house fell on him, he is dying as a slab of reinforced concrete crushes him, he is buried with the others whom you can still see — and smell — under the ruins of the Diocese of Haiti’s trade school next door to the rubble that was their magnificent cathedral.

And he is Alive. Jesus is Alive! All that we suffer, Jesus suffers. He is with us now. And because Jesus is risen from the dead, Alive among us, we also have life. So all those who perished in the earthquake since — and the death toll is rising toward 400,000 — live with him. “If Christ be not raised,” St Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to them — “If Christ be not raised, your faith is null and void, you are still in your sins, and those who have died are utterly lost. But Christ did rise from the dead.” Jesus is alive, and so we can believe that all who perished in the earthquake, and all whom we love, now share his new life.

And still more, since Jesus is alive, the future — my future, your future — belongs to him. The future belongs to God. And this fact gives us confidence that we will find the means to overcome all the challenges of this life, even this terrible disaster, the greatest natural catastrophe of recorded history, and come out victorious. Jesus is both human like us and divine like God, so that the Holy Trinity can share in our life and we can share in God’s life, as God seeks to transform the whole creation.

Jesus is with you and with me. He will always be with you and in you. Our future belongs to him, without fail. Therefore leave this place today confident that you can face this day, you can confront the challenges of this life, and you will overcome them, because God is with you.

The Lord is risen! Indeed, he is risen.