Are We Up To It?

The genocide in Sudan is arguably the most under-reported news story of our time. Since the current conflict erupted in February 2013, more than 400,000 Sudanese have died and almost two million have been driven from their homes -but this vicious war has been all but ignored in the wake of the headlines from Iraq, Syria and Ukraine and the political and military fire storm that conflict has ignited.

One of the few journalists to cover the Sudanese civil war with any depth is Ann Curry. Ann has made three trips to Sudan in the past twelve months alone. In March she travelled to Darfur, one of the most dangerous places on earth, to report on the genocide for NBC Nightly News and Reuters.

Ann’s reporting from Sudan has put her at considerable risk, but, she says, “I am more afraid of not having done enough to help others than I am of dying.” She has confronted the president of Sudan -on the air -for his tacit approval of the genocide. She has shown the horror and suffering endured by the Sudanese people with an aggressiveness and relentlessness seldom seen on television. She and her crew have spent nights in refugee camps and ramshackle hotels to cover a story she is passionate about telling to the world.

Ann Curry says that this story has touched in her a fierce ambition to bear witness to such massive human suffering.

“The real reason,” she says, “is that as a child when I learned that there were people who risked their own lives and even the lives of their children, their families, to save Jews during the Holocaust, it was a profound moment for me. It made me question whether I am the kind of human being who would take such risks.”

The question Ann Curry asks herself is the same question Christ poses to us as he takes his leave of his fledgling Church on the Mount of the Ascension. He entrusts to us the work -including the risks and doubts -of carrying on the work of his Gospel of compassion, reconciliation and justice.

Are we up to it?

Do we dare take it on in the Ukraine’s, Gaza’s and Darfur’s of our own lives? In baptism, every Christian of every time and place takes on the role of witness to all that Jesus did and taught: Today, on the mount of the Ascension, Jesus entrusts to us, his Church, the work of his Gospel — with all its risks and struggles.

We are witnesses not only in our articulating the powerful words of the Gospel but in the quiet, simple, but no less powerful expressions of compassion and love that echo the same compassion and love of God — God who is Father and Son and Brother and Sister to us all.