In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“We are still under evacuation orders. This is our fourth day in a hotel. Our house is okay but there is no electricity or gas. At least five houses have been hit by looters on my street. Many parishioners have put their homes up for sale. It’s essentially uncountable how many families have evacuated their homes from my parish.”
This was a text I received on Friday from a dear friend of mine. He is the pastor of one of the local Armenian Churches in the Los Angeles area. I reached out to him to see how he and his family were doing based on all the horrific stories and images we are hearing about and seeing every day of the horrible fires in California.
He responded immediately with the message I just shared with you along with photos of his local neighborhood. He went on to say that he has never seen a fire destroy like this in all the years he lived in L.A. “Schools are gone. Offices are gone. Homes are gone. You don’t even know what road you are on because all familiar landmarks have been burned away. The water in Pasadena is not drinkable. Ash falls from the sky day and night. In the Armenian Community one of the three day schools burned to the ground. The Armenian Nursing Home has been evacuated out of concern. There is utter destruction everywhere.”
In times like this, we worry. We think about what will happen to those people and to their city and that it could very easily have been our city. Maybe not wildfires but a snowstorm the likes we have not seen since the Blizzard of ’78 or something much worse. We worry about our planet becoming less livable and about running out of places to live and water to drink and even clean air to breathe.
Now, we know that these devastating fires are not the first natural disaster we have seen. Every year or so, we hear about earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes. I hear people begin asking the question of “Is this the Will of God?” “Why does God allow these things to happen?” But to ask was the fire the will of God is not really a question about God. It’s not asking, “Was God pleased or saddened when the flood nearly destroyed this city or that one?” It is a question about the kind of world we live in. Does our world make sense? Does everything happen for a reason? To answer that, let’s look at Jesus’ Baptism. His Baptism begins His public ministry. He begins by calling His disciples to Him.
The story says that both Peter and Andrew see Jesus approaching and recognizing Him, they begin to follow. Realizing He is being followed, Jesus turns around and asks these two men, “What they want?” And so they answer Him, “Rabbi,” they ask, “Where are You going?” With three words, Jesus changes their lives forever. “Come and see,” He says. In other words, “Follow Me,” He told them, “and you will find our answer.” And they did just that.
“Come and See” is an invitation by God to follow Him and live life in a different way. It’s an invitation to make our world a better place. This invitation calls us to love one another and He shows us that Christian Love requires sacrifice, seeks kindness and demands action. It finds a way to solve a problem and makes people’s lives better. It looks for ways to heal and mend the broken and forgive the wrong, to even disagree but to do it without being hurtful. When these things happen, the healing begins That is how we mend the cracks.
Let me end with this. Imagine you and I had the opportunity to ask Jesus the same question Peter and Andrew asked Him. “Where are You going Rabbi?” And He answers us the same way He answered those two disciples “Come and see.” He takes us to a road that leads to a beautiful but the road is cracked and broken. He says to us “This is our road and it will lead you to a beautiful land, but it needs mending. It needs repair. I want you to help heal it. I hope we all agree that we cannot heal our broken world without the Love of God. “Come and see” is His way of calling us to bring His Love, His Forgiveness and His Healing ways into our land.
May God heal the scorched lands of Los Angeles and may the healing being with us.
Amen.
