Responding to Disaster part 2

Last week I introduced a summary of an address from a few years ago.  It was given by Rev. Dr. Lizette Larson-Miller, Professor of Liturgy at Huron University College.  Larson -Miller was the keynote speaker at the 2018 National Anglican and Lutheran Worship Conference.  As the “leader of the free world” has more than two years remaining in his term in the country directly south of us, a term which is defined by disasters, I believe that it is worthwhile offering this today.   Here is the conclusion of the summary of the address. 

At times, what is needed after disaster is a time of healing. However, Larson-Miller warned, “there’s a huge difference between Christian healing and ‘curing.’” While curing addresses symptoms, she said, healing is “always about wholeness”—mental, emotional, physical and spiritual.

Larson-Miller cautioned against blurring the lines between pastoral counselling and therapy. “Therapy, of course works towards diagnoses and treatment to solve [a] problem; prayer is not, first and foremost, problem solving…Therapeutic counselling is a separate field. Training in pastoral care does not automatically include expertise in psychiatry or psychology,” she said.

As Christians, she said, “What we have to give…is our presence, our time, our listening with the ear of our heart, the naming of the sorrow or the violence, praying to God for those who hurt, sacramental ministry and referral to other experts when that is needed.”

During a time of worship before the plenary session, conference attendees prayed through lighting candles and other activities. “Not all prayer is verbal,” Larson-Miller said.

One of the reasons theology can often be sidelined when responding to a tragedy is a reticence to talk about sin, said Larson-Miller.

Larson-Miller challenged conference attendees to identify and name the sins that lead to disaster. “The ancient tradition of the church of Christianity…is to talk about the solidarity of the suffering of Christ with the suffering of those who have been sinned against…who have been caught up into disaster.”

As an example, she led an ELCA prayer that names racism as a sin with tragic consequences.

“You can see, actually, the theological movement,” she said of the prayer, which begins by calling on God to forgive sins of racism and ends with asking God to “Empower us to speak boldly for justice and truth and help us to deal with one another without hatred or bitterness.”

Responses should still vary by context, Larson-Miller said. “Public rites of penance may be what’s called for. Sometimes…patience is called for. Sometimes claiming personal responsibility is what’s called for. Sometimes naming complacency in sin is called for.”

She also challenged churches to name “not just the evil we’ve done directly, but what’s been done in our name.” Like sin, evil has “fallen out of polite conversation,” Larson-Miller said, “But it is in the centre of many disasters to which we respond.” As an example of this complacency, Larson-Miller played a video showing the dire working conditions in mines where cobalt is extracted for use in smartphones.

Larson-Miller also reflected on a recent trip to visit the Swampy Cree in northwestern Manitoba. In a community plagued by suicide, poverty and violence, Larson-Miller was struck by how Indigenous Anglicans responded to these disasters. “I think one of the things that I learned, I’m still processing, is the hope that in all of this, it is God who gives us the ultimate victory over death, over suffering, over tragedies.”

A gospel jamboree, which Larson-Miller described as “not unlike an extended wake,” featuring songs, silence and testimony, is one response used by the Swampy Cree, which is intended to help heal the community. Another is a “Walk to Remember,” a “stational liturgy of mourning” in which sites of violence or suffering are visited. At each place, Scripture and prayers are read and Holy water is used. “Each place is restored, and in each place, evil is banished,” said Larson-Miller.

“Walking and praying and extolling God. It seems like a perfect response—a perfect Christian response—to disaster.”

At the root of all responses, Larson-Miller said, is “our hope in Christ.” All Christian liturgy must point to hope in God, “trust and faith, embedded in the love of God.

“This is not the same as resolving everything into a neat package…we often have trouble leaving things open. But the worship of God is always an acknowledgment of God as God; God with us, in whom we rest.”

May God be with us and walk beside us not only in times of disaster but also every day.