Reckless faith

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

Now while Jesus was at Bethany…a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head… But when the disciples saw it, they were angry … Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me…By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. —Matthew 26.6-13 (abbreviated)

On December 26, 2004, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded triggered tsunamis that killed hundreds of thousands of people in coastal areas throughout Southern Asia and northeastern Africa, nearly 200,000 of them Achenese on the western end of Indonesia’s archipelago. That same day we were hiking up and down steep mountain slopes in Alor, an island two thousand miles to the east, visiting congregations struck by the only earthquake we knew about at the time, namely the one that shook Alor, and hard (7.2 RS), in mid-November. The Alor quake, pale in comparison to the one west of Aceh, was nevertheless disastrous: 6,000 homes destroyed, 400 churches and mosques in ruins, 200 wounded and 33 dead. One reason for our hike was to make our own assessment of the physical, emotional and theological impact of the quake on remote mountain congregations in eastern Alor. We hiked past landslides and rockslides precipitated by the quake, photographed damaged church buildings, listened to stories, prayed and worshiped. Each time we felt the tremor of a light aftershock – even a month and a half after the initial Alor quake – an instinctual urge to flee would kick in, until we saw that no one else was moving. Many Alorese were used to aftershocks by then, but we found it difficult to sleep some nights, our dreams haunted by vicarious memories.

The second day of our hike began with a steep three-hour ascent under blistering sun, our only relief an occasional switchback that took us briefly through the shaded side of the mountain. (An Alorese friend described it well: “You walk with your knees hitting your chin.”) By noon we had reached the hilltop community of Fosing on the border between South Central and East Alor presbyteries where we were warmly received by about 100 members of the congregation. They had gathered with gongs and betel nut under colored tarps a few meters below their church building, a large cement-block skeleton still under construction, its interior filled with wood scaffolding. As with many other church buildings we observed, this one too was perched atop a prominent hill; this one too had a steeple-like entrance that had been most vulnerable to the tremors. But within days of the November quake the people of Fosing had begun to repair the damage to their church and continued building it even as the height from which they worked exaggerated the sway caused by aftershocks.

Damage to the Fosing church was much lighter than it would have been had the building been finished. The completion of another brand new church building we saw had been celebrated only a month earlier, but the quake had made worship in it unsafe so that it had to be abandoned. Had logic dictated, the congregation in Fosing would have cut their losses either by selecting a safer location for their church building or by rebuilding it from the ground up, using local materials and architecture more resistant to earthquakes than the popular cathedral-like cement structures. Indeed, the earthquake had proven what structures in hard-hit areas were able to stand: those with the traditional wood frame, plaited bamboo walls and thatched roofs shook and swayed, but most of them were still standing; nearly all the cement and brick buildings were in ruins. And cement is hard to come by: it must be transported to the mountain villages in small batches (usually during the dry season) by means of four-wheel drive vehicles. The transportation cost doubles the price from that paid in town.

We have long lamented the drain on local economies when cash-poor rural farmers insist on building expensive brick and cement churches with ceramic tile floors while they themselves live in thatched cottages. Like the angry disciples, we object to the expensive buildings when the logic of stewardship would dictate that the money would be better used buying medicine for the sick and sending children to school. And like the woman in Bethany, the village congregations stubbornly pour out the costly ointment because it is more important to them to do something that in their eyes is beautiful for God.

So, for the congregation in Fosing, logic did not dictate, faith did. In an act of defiance the builders mixed costly cement, built window and door frames, climbed back up on the scaffolding and…kept building, even as the aftershocks kept coming. What was it they were defying? That’s open to speculation, but we think it was several things. They defied the logic of safety, the tyranny of plate tectonics that had slipped a fault line under their church building, but perhaps most importantly they continued to build their church to defy defeat and hopelessness. It may have been foolhardy, but there was a basic human dignity in what they were doing. They could die up there on the scaffolding if another big tremor hits, but if so they are prepared. Having anointed their church with reckless faith they are prepared to die in dignity. And when this good news is told, it is told in remembrance of them, stubborn witnesses to the Resurrection.

John and Karen Campbell-Nelson
West Timor, Indonesia

John & Karen Campbell-Nelson are missionaries serving with the Evangelical Christian Church of Timor. Karen has been assigned to the faculty of Artha Wacana University and its Center for Regional Studies, while John serves as a professor there.