Sweat

Photo credit: contemplative imaging, The Shrine of Christ’s Passion in St John, Indiana. Flickr, some rights reserved.

[This post is part of a series of illustrations for, and analogies of, Jesus’ saving work in the medical substitutionary atonement paradigm.  This series is especially designed for teachers, preachers, parents, and communicators.  This and other illustrations of the atonement can be found here.] 

I wrote this poem, “Sweat,” while in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2014. I was with a group of college students on a Christian service and learning trip. The students were American, Dominican, and Haitian. I learned a great deal preparing for the trip and during it. I am humbled by how much more I need to learn. I wrote this poem about how much I dislike sweating, and what I learned from Jesus’ sweat in Gethsemane. Here’s an explainer to some things I mention:

• Restavec children are Haitian children, usually from impoverished and hopeless families in the countryside, who become the unpaid domestic and unschooled servants of other households. The Haitian government and United Nations have acknowledged the restavec system as a form of modern child slavery and the Haitian government has made it illegal, but does nothing to stop it. We served as teachers’ aides in schools, so we met some of those children.

• Chikungunya, according to the World Health Organization “is a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. It is caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV). A CHIKV infection causes fever and severe joint pain. Other symptoms include muscle pain, joint swelling, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash. Joint pain associated with chikungunya is often debilitating, and can vary in duration. There is currently no vaccine or specific drug against the virus. The treatment is focused on relieving the disease symptoms.”

• U.S. Farm subsidies: The U.S. Farm Bill lumps together food stamps with lopsided agribusiness subsidies to stabilize our food prices and oversupply our markets. So a subsidized 55 lb. bag of rice from the U.S. costs about half the price of a Haitian bag of rice. This drives Haitian farmers out of business and they have repeatedly called for the U.S. to stop this practice even after the earthquake, when they asked for cash to buy local food and support local farmers instead. Many migrate to the Dominican Republic or to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, looking for work but finding mostly poverty. This migration has caused tension in the D.R.

On this island I sweat the most –

My skin already sticky eating breakfast toast.

The tropical sun and the humid air

Make me wish for fans everywhere.

I sweated on the dirt roads in Leogane

And in the classrooms in Anonsiyasyon

When we taught restavec children under hot metal roofs.

The smell of their bodies served as proof

That they were older than the usual kids

But had hopes and dreams that far outdid

Any shame or fear that their late age

Might make them look foolish at that stage.

Though my forehead dripped salt into my eyes,

Haitian teachers had to disguise

The exhaustion that chikungunya brings

While teaching children who make the heart sing.

With sweat, fruit and flowers bloom

On this beautiful island where people make such room

For us as guests in the heat of the day

Where using stoves makes me faint away.

I sweated while walking down farming tracks,

Where cows and goats left nice, warm packs

Of fertilizer, gift-wrapped to make us wait:

Good things can come from even waste.

Why then do I not like to see

Evidence of my own humanity?

My sweat, my smell, or my teammates’ pee

When we conserve toilet water – it stares back at me.

Maybe sweat wouldn’t be so bad,

If I could accomplish more than I had.

Helping dig latrines – they’re nice to see

But compared to U.S. farm subsidies…

How much more work needs to be done?

I feel like I should be doing a ton,

Changing the world for every drop of sweat:

A reward for my armpits getting wet.

Is sweat a sign of weakness?  Or of love?

That things pass through me from below and above.

I depend on water’s cleansing flow

To purify and heal me as I grow.

Even the Son of God was thirsty when

He waited by a well for a Samaritan.

He was sweaty, for the sun was high.

He probably smelled the way I always try

Not to – so soaked in chemicals am I:

In sanitized illusions do I try to hide.

But Jesus shows me who I was meant to be

God’s true and devoted humanity.

He struggled one lonely night in Gethsemane,

Drenched in sweat among the olive trees.

He wrestled against the corruption within,

Smelling of God’s love against our sin.

Through his sweaty death and resurrection,

Jesus led God’s insurrection,

Rebelling against the ways we hide our sweat,

And the ways we must be changed yet.

Now every drop of sweat that falls,

Finds fresh meaning in Jesus’ call:

To love each precious person no matter where:

We must sweat to show God’s love there.

Trudging slowly on days hot or wet,

Enduring mosquito bites as I sweat,

Without much thanks and without much pay,

Without much relief even in the shade.

Have I walked with him to the costly point,

Where my own body does my sweat anoint:

This earthy baptism through the Spirit’s love

Is God’s refining fire from above.

Lord, You designed us to sweat, and not to sin,

Though work in the body can reflect the struggle within.

For we can sweat out sin – that thing so odd –

And drink in the love of a sweating God.