Global Citizens and People of Faith

by Maria Otero
August 26, 2007


When Mary asked me to stand at the pulpit today as part of Dumbarton’s Summer Adventure, I hesitated. You see, I am married to a preacher. I was also brought up a Catholic, in a very very Catholic family in Latin America in which I never met a Protestant, much less a Methodist. I am sure my parents wished one of their sons would be a priest, and not that their daughter marry somebody who my relatives in Bolivia thought was a priest…The point is, I never had any exposure to a preacher and his role…so I was often puzzled when I first met Joe, and I would share with him a meaningful story for one of my trips, or an insight and he would respond, with no other additional elaboration “that will preach!” So now Mary had me all summer at the most unexpected moments asking myself “Will this preach? Will that preach?”

Luke’s gospel speaks to us about the infirm, about Jesus’s decision to free a bent woman from her ailment, her bondage, and the fact that he did it on the Sabbath. Jeremiah’s words remind us that even when we stand as vulnerable and a young boy, unsure we can take on what is asked of us, an unshakable truth prevails: that God is within us, that she has known each of us even before we were in the womb because God is with us are not to be afraid.

I want to share with you how these words speak to my own personal journey, particularly working with the poor. I know that in this church all of us seek ways to connect -- in our own backyard and beyond – with the disadvantaged, with those buckled down by the burdens of poverty. This church is full of people for whom this connection is grounded in their belief that we are all children of God, and that our faith journey is engaged, fortified, strengthened if as part of it we seek to better the lives of the less fortunate – so I am, quite literally, preaching to the choir -- but that is okay, because what we do when we gather here together as a faith community is make that connection between our daily lives and our spiritual journeys and to understand better how they are fed, made clearer by the word.

My journey is framed by the fact that I come from one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere - Bolivia. I grew up in La Paz in a family of many children and of modest economic means - we lived in a two bedroom house, six kids in one bedroom, we had no hot water, we owned no car. But I grew up with all the comforts of being part of an elite upper middle class family - all opportunities were open to me, my family’s name carried weight, I was part of the small minority - whites - who ran the show.

But the majority of Bolivians are poor indigenous people who are excluded for the access I took for granted. I came into contact everyday with them…and I didn’t understand what I understand now.

Which is that the greatest burden humankind faces is poverty. It is intractable, relentless. I want to talk about how we as Christians live in world where more than half of our fellow human being are poor. Poverty means:

No cash – not having enough money to put a roof over head, to feed your children. Over 3 billion live on less than $2 day
Humanness is assaulted: Dignity stripped away. Powerlessness. Hopelessness. Can’t plan. On the brink of disaster. The woman whose children don’t go to school because they roamed the city collecting plastic bottles to sell, otherwise the family can’t eat. The vulnerability - not going what will happen tomorrow. No control over your future. At all. Think about that.

The description in Luke’s gospel of a woman bent over by her burden speaks to me of the hundreds of millions of women weighted down by the burden of being poor, or lacking opportunity, of not being able to feed or educate their children.

In the countries in the south, poor people from rural areas have moved into the sprawling cities looking for jobs - they have no education, no skills, no connections, no support system, no anything. They squatter on vacant land, build shacks made out of tin and cardboard. They cannot find work so they survive by being small traders, or by starting a little business – everything from banging old metal into pots and pans, fashioning furniture from wood or metal, making shoes, cooking and selling food on the streets.

What they seek is to work. All they want is to work. In Luke’s gospel Jesus reminds us of the right of everyone to work, even as he chooses to do it on the Sabbath.

My organization, ACCION International, makes loans available – micro-loans - to poor people so they can run their own businesses - microenterprises - and earn income. We work in 24 countries where we start microfinance banks, we train the staff to go into the slums, markets, poor neighborhoods to find the small carpenter, the vegetable vendor, the seamstress…all those who cannot go into a bank to borrow money.

Last year, in Arusha, Tanzania, I met Sophia. Her husband died 12 years ago, and she was left with almost nothing - with no education she had no way to survive or sustain her two young daughters. Her determination led her to borrow $50 to purchase two 100-kilo bags of rice, repackage them and sell them to small retailers in the market. She paid back her loan with interest, and received a second loan, for the next six months – and then another, and another, as she needed them to grow her business. This is how she started and ran her own microenterprise, and today, after many years of hard work and many loans, she has had stable income and now employs several people and sells hundreds of pounds of rice, ground nuts and beans. It is as if Jeremiah’s words about God had guided her down this difficult path “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”

Sophia lives on a dusty, unpaved street and runs her business out of her house – two rooms with dirt floors. There is an inner courtyard where an elderly woman sitting on the ground cleans the rice by passing it through a homemade tin strainer, and where Sophia’s 85-year old mother sits in the sun. The 100- kilo bags of cleaned rice are stacked floor to ceiling in her living room, are carefully weighed on an old scale and divided up into smaller bags. Two young men Sophia employs load up the bags on to rickety hand-pulled wooden wagon and they deliver them throughout Arusha. Sophia is proud of what she has accomplished, but her eyes really shine when she talks about her two daughters – who are at the university.

At first sight and taken by itself, this is a humble story of little interest to a passerby. However, played out over and over again in markets, slums, barrios, villages around the world, this is a compelling and inspiring story of resolute perseverance; of the power of the human spirit; of the dignity needed to overcome the enduring grasp of poverty. It is God’s grace enveloping this woman, and as I share in her story, enveloping me.

ACCION developed a way of lending to the poor that uses character as collateral, charges interest rate to cover the costs of the lending operations, and disburses the loans quickly. People paid their loans with amazing diligence. Soon ACCION was able to grow this experiment to create banks.

So in 1992 ACCION created BancoSol, the first commercial bank for the poor. It was a revolutionary idea -- it turned banking on its head. We were violating the law that every self respecting banker believed: that poor people can’t use money responsibly, that the poor can’t pay back their loans, that banks are for the rich. These myths and other myths we fabricate exclude people from access. When ACCION created this first bank for the poor in Bolivia the whole banking system, in a country of 8 million people had a total of 140,000 clients -- less than 2% of the population.

Giving people access transforms them. I will never forget when I took a delegation of business professors to Guatemala to visit the work of ACCION. We met with Esperanza, a tiny woman of Mayan descent who made shoes in a corner of her one room house, with the dirt floor. She welcomed us in and proudly showed us her business, which probably produced 20 pairs of shoes a week. After a few minutes, one of the professors asked me to translate “Can you ask her what her unit cost of production is?” I turned to him and said, “No I can’t do that. She will be embarrassed in front of their two daughters because she doesn’t know.” He insisted persistently, until apologetically I asked: “Dona Esperanza, this professor from the north wants to know if you know, if you can tell him what your unit cost of production is.” She looked up at him, and answered with a strong, assured voice, “Of course I know, it is 18 quetzales (Guatemalan currency) a pair, and come and I will show how much it is at each step of production.”

Esperanza’s words remind me that God’s enormous power resides in each of us – power to create change, to extend beyond what we ourselves or others may think possible. This woman, with a little capital, was able to do things she never before imagined. Her sense of self-worth, of dignity, of empowerment spilled over into the roles her daughters saw her play, as she juggled running a business and taking care of them, her business and her household. And answering a question from a formidable stranger which even I thought she couldn’t answer! Her sense of humility – God’s love expressed through her -- and her fierce resolve overwhelmed me. They filled me with grace.

To this day, I imagine her mentoring other young women in her community, taking the lead in demanding water and sanitation facilities from the Municipality, and telling her daughters that of course they should go to college, even though she didn’t finish the third grade.

Meeting these women is life-changing. I too am a minority woman, I arrived as an immigrant to this country. I have had access to a world class education. I have had endless opportunities to pursue my dreams, to excel. I live in the most affluent country in the world. You can go to a website called www.globalrich.com, plug in your income, press “show me the money” and it will show you where your income fits among that of all people on earth. For example, if you make $120,000 you are on the top .53 % of people. If you make $60,000 you are at .91% - both are in the top 1% of the world. If you make $40,000 you are on the top 3.17%, and if you make $23,000 you are on the top 10.5% of the world. Now, this isn’t a reason for us to beat our breasts and feel guilty and pull our hair. It is something we should celebrate. We are healthy, we are wealthy, we are God’s children and we can change the world.

The times I have come closest to understanding God’s infinite goodness, of experiencing grace has been the simple, unadorned times I have sat down with these women and talked. It hasn’t been the times I get all dressed up and speak in front of luminaries or important people or appear in magazines, or get interviewed or given award. When my spirit is filled, when God’s love and my ability to convey and receive love are made more manifest and spill into the rest of my life are these times.

This seems like a simple truth but I am always astounded at its powers. My eyes are opened wide. And the strength of these women -- and men -- who face adversity we can’t even imagine -- makes it crystal clear to me that humility and fierce resolve, coupled with working solutions to global poverty are the ingredients that give us hope and inspire us. And we don’t have to go to Tanzania or Bolivia or India to them – they are at our doorstep. The Luke story reminds us that the response to human need through love trumps law, tradition, orthodoxy. William Sloan Coffin put it this ay “the integrity of love is greater than the purity of doctrine.” Dumbarton’s witness personifies that love.

I believe that part of our faith journey includes working to better the lives of those who are less fortunate. And in our desire to reflect the goodness of God’s love among our fellow beings and touch the divine – that in itself becomes a means of grace, for the one who receives and the one who gives. We have the opportunity to express our faith by making this world more just, fairer and more peaceful. As global citizens of the 21st century, and as people of faith who happen to be highly privileged, this is our work going into the future. AMEN