David in Nicaragua #7: 'introduction' and 'on armor'

This is the last in a series of posts about my recent two week trip to Nicaragua. You'll probably read it first, though, since it's a blog. Each post is accompanied by a few photos, some of which have to do with the post topic, some of which don't. I wrote these over the past couple of days, while being a little sick in bed and playing a lot of Final Fantasy III. Anyway, here they are, and sorry to post so many at once. I knocked a great post by Megan Highfill off the front page; be sure to click on the June Archives so you don't miss it.
Look! Now we're a blog with lots of recent posts!






'on armor':
One night I went to bed worrying about scorpions; Rachael found one on a skirt she was putting on. It turns out that I shouldn’t be so afraid of them; they don’t hurt you any more than a bee sting. But boy, are they scary! Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night to a mouse chewing on some food I had accidentally left in my bag, which was beside me on the bed. He was a bold one, that mouse. I emptied out the bag and chased him away, but it just got me thinking. The whole flow of life in Nicaragua as I experienced it is a little less hectic than in the US, but it also seems more dangerous. There’s less concern for safety in most things; and nobody but the gringos gets to take malaria medicine.
There were a lot of moments on the trip when I was really worried about something or other, and there was often nothing to be done about it. I ended up having to take in on faith. Putting it in God’s hands, to acknowledge that it was out of my hands, and to have some sense of peace about it all.


I think these moments happened to me more in Nicaragua than in my normal scorpion-free, first-world existence because of a choice. I think you can either have the armor of God or the armor of privilege. You can be protected by your race, class, gender, citizenship, or not. Now, obviously, for many folks, this is not a choice. But for the privileged folks, which I say includes most of the readers here, we get to choose. I think that the more I give up/undermine my social and economic privileges, the things which I imagine protect me from pain and injury, the more I am forced to rely on God. I can’t fit the armor of God over my armor of privilege; it’s got to come off first.

april fool's communion

They scheduled me to help lead communion yesterday. Which was both Palm Sunday, and April Fool's Day. One would think that by now they would know me better than this, but it got me to thinking about similarities between this holy week and, well, April Fool's Day.

First, I remember hearing about a liturgical tradition from the first few centuries of the Christian church. Apparently, on Easter morning, the priest was required to make the whole congregation bust out laughing before the beginning of the mass. This was in celebration of Christ tricking the devil, as atonement theology went in those days. My atonement theology is markedly different, but I still think there's something hilarious about resurrection.

Second: Someone told me about the origins of April Fool's Day. Apparently, when Europe switched over to a new calendar, some folks didn't get the memo, and so celebrated New Year's Day on the first of April. I think that being on a non-Empire-endorsed calendar, and getting laughed at for it, is appropriate on such a holy week.

Finally, I thought about Maundy Thursday, coming up here. It was my job to give the invitation to communion, since I was the guy holding the cup, and I thought about what Jesus was inviting his loved ones to in that moment. Basically, much as at the beginning of a joke, or the first day of a new year, or at the beginning of any invitation, he was inviting them to mystery. I said to my church, "If you decide to come up here, I don't know what's going to happen."

I was going to leave it at that, in that doubt and mystery and slim hope. But I was reminded of Dow Edgerton's advice about preaching, in class last week, which was this: (he got it from a retired woman preacher, one of the first in Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin) "Preach your faith, not your doubts." And so, in an effort to preach the part of my spiritual life that feels like faith and not just doubt, I said, "I don't know what's going to happen. But I know who you'll be with."

And they came.