C Advent OL3 BFC
2018
Luke 1:1-11; 2:1-5; 3:1-3
December 16, 2018
For
several days, our Witness for Peace delegation stayed in one of the most active
and inspired communities led by the Oaxacan teachers—Zaachila. My time in Zaachila had one of those
beautiful, heart-warming cross cultural stories that only I seem to produce
when I travel to Mexico and Guatemala
My
bedroom had no door or drape across its entrance, but the bathroom opposite my
bedroom did have a large towel draped across the entrance. When I woke up in the morning, I gathered up
my clothes and headed to the bathroom. I
turned the handles on the shower . . . and nothing. Huh.
Ok, I’ll try again. Nothing. No big deal, no shower today, so I’ll just
change out of my sweats into my t-shirt and jeans for that day. Forgetting that a shower in an upstairs
bathroom would need time for the water pressure to build, I had all my clothes
off when all of a sudden . . . water came streaming from the shower head.
The
rest of the Witness for Peace delegation snickered in laughter as I described
what it was like trying to decide what to do next. Ok, do I make a quick, streaking dash to the
uncovered bedroom? With no shower
curtain, how do I now protect my already wet clothes from becoming sopping wet? I was literally, as they say in Spanish, entre dos aguas. While trying to explain how funny and
embarrassing this was when I got home, Tracy
As the
first international observers to arrive in Oaxaca and some of the only gring@s
remaining in a tourist area like Oaxaca City, we were told over and over again
that our presence in the area, particularly in a small community like Zaachila,
made our hosts feel more safe and secure.
Our hosts believed that our presence did not allow the state and federal
government to act with total impunity.
Almost
every Mexican person we met with in an official capacity had a warrant out for
their arrest with active calls on the government radio station for their
assassination. These were people who
chronicled human rights abuses, who denounced torture, and called for an end to
the corruption in their community, state, and nation. In Zaachila this was an eighty-year old
indigenous woman who, during one of the marches, had scolded the young federal
police boys as her own sons. In Zaachila
these were teachers who had bought breakfasts, shoes, and supplies for their
students and who now asked the government to provide for these basic student needs
as a way of creating the common good.
For
that is why we give power to government, any government, it is to say that we
recognize having beautiful parks, paved roadways, and well-funded public
schools in our communities provides for “the common good.” Zaachila threw the mayor of their fair city
out because they recognized the way he was selling off their city property to
line his own pockets. The mayor’s form
of government did not square up with a government that was providing for the
common good.
I
always tell folks who return from a delegation or mission trip to make their first
presentation to a group from which they are not asking anything. Because too often that first presentation is
filled with embarrassing, touristy stories like one about a shower. For example, “You should have seen when this
happened or that happened or the sunrise as it came over the mountain or the
moon in its radiance with none of the false light we have at night!” I think it is human nature that folks return
from a different culture with all the flora and fauna details so vivid in their
mind that those details are the first thing that comes out. We are moved by the details and too often
forget the big picture which is so much harder to communicate.
The New
Testament gospels, and Luke in particular, try to say something about that big
picture by the details given. Luke’s
details function as a backdrop for the entire story. Lest we think religion has nothing to do with
politics, the author of Luke would dissuade us.
“In the days of King Herod of Judea . .
. “
“In those days a decree
went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This
was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria
“In the fifteenth year
of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of
Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high
priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, . . . “
Each one of those political, ruling statements is followed
by the hope of a people who witness God actively working in their lives. In the days of King Herod of Judea , there was a man named Zechariah and his wife
Elizabeth. In those days a decree went
out from Emperor Augustus, and responding to that decree are two migrants from Nazareth Judea ,
the word of God came to John.
Luke knew that God’s activity happened within the political
matrix of first century Rome. Scholars
use the term matrix instead of context because matrix reminds us that
historical people interact with their historical time and geographical
place. It acts upon them. They act upon it. To say “context” sometimes unintentionally
communicates time and place as static and passive.
Biblical
scholars will also tell you that when Biblical writers take pains to include
such detail, we would do well to sit up and take notice because the writers are
trying to tell us something about the drama that is about to unfold. To understand the story, one has to know the
political landscape and how that landscape affects all the people within the
story. Luke could not make it more
clear: the gospel story takes place
within the Roman Empire, in the geographical area ruled by King Herod, and at a
time when the religious aristocracy openly collaborated with Rome and its Caesars. God’s activity is a rejoinder to that Empire—in
the days of King Herod there was a man named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth;
in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus and Mary and Joseph went
from Nazareth to Bethlehem; in the fifteenth year of Emperor Tiberius, the word
of God came to John. Biblical scholar
Richard A. Horsley believes this juxtaposition is the kind of evidence which
defines Christianity in the first century—and the definition of Christianity is: anti-Empire.
Much like the organization that facilitated my delegation
to Oaxaca , Witness for Peace, Christianity in
first century Rome
We really have to dispel this notion that Christianity
should somehow be politically neutral. And
I remember how hard it was, as someone who changed my major from political
science in college and did not do well in economics class, to recognize that my
faith was leading me to become better informed about politics and economics so
that I could be more faithful. I know
that that gospel is out there, that Christianity is not political, the tempting
idea that if we just love one another we do not have to learn global economics
and politics.
I talked about the idea with several people on the
delegation-- that Americans know so little about global economics and politics
compared to the Mexican folk we met in Zaachila. Even the high school student I met during my
home stay explained to me his basic understandings of neo-liberal economics and
free trade and how those policies affected his community. “Why,” I asked other members of the
delegation, “do Americans know so little about these things?” Sean, one of the independent journalists on
the delegation, suggested that one of the reasons is because Americans, for the
most part, profit from not knowing
what their country’s policies do to the rest of the world. Ignorance has an interest, he suggested. And I think Sean may be partly right.
Love requires our whole being. Our soul cannot be splintered into a
political self, an economic self, and a spiritual self. We need to know what neo-liberal economics, free
trade, and NAFTA mean and what those policies continue to do to people and the
good earth in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In a world where growing fencepost to
fencepost on big industrial farms was once a way farmers sought to feed the
world, we need to now ask ourselves whether that is an outdated missionary
model that has imperialist overtones.
For are there not strong people in every country who could feed their
communities if they were given the necessary resources and allowed the
necessary freedoms to farm their own land?
In a world where two of the poorest states in Mexico have some of the
greatest natural resources, we need to ask ourselves whether building roads to
get those resources to the ocean where they can be shipped north is loving and
fair and just? For are not the resources
of a land to be shared with the people inhabit that land? Should the Empire or the people decide how
the corn, the coffee, or as Jesus related, how the bread and fish should be
shared?
If faith has nothing to say to issues which dictate the
poverty and oppression to a people, then faith becomes irrelevant and love and
justice are placebos which have no real grit.
Faith dictates that we should know how our Empire provides a difficult
matrix for people all around the world.
Some Oaxacans chose to stand their ground and ask for breakfasts, shoes,
and resources for the students in their schools. Other Oaxacans, at that time, 150,000 a year,
headed to more northern parts of Mexico and the United States. Love demands that we know. Love demands that we know.
This mother and teacher who wanted to offer me a dry shirt
to take with me when I came down for breakfast had a political radio broadcast
playing throughout my whole time at her house.
The teacher wanted to make sure she heard any news of the movement. She had participated in the three major
marches, including the pots and pans march where women nonviolently overtook
the local radio station. The mother frequently
broke into the chant: “A people united
shall never be defeated!” (el pueblo unidos jamas sera vencido) On
one of the pointsettias in the heavily guarded Zocalo in Oaxaca City
In the second term of President George W. Bush, a treaty
was made that not only included Mexico but sought to include all of Central
America, when the APPO leader Flavio Sosa was imprisoned, and living in the
town of Zaachila, Oaxaca, with a corrupt and brutal mayor, there was a mother
and teacher named Claudia. In Claudia’s
matrix, she believed that peace was possible and that God intended joy for her
family, for her students, for her community.
Where I
arrived in Oaxaca as a person for little hope for a new world, a different
world, I came away from that delegation with a hope against hope. No, I did not see any realistic possibility
for APPO and the teachers to carry the day.
But knowing Claudia and her courage made me believe that God’s purposes
were being worked out. I think we are
often hopeless in our country because we do not know the courage of a Claudia
or the resolve of Maryknoll missionaries, or the wisdom of a high school
student. And love, love demands that we
know.
Today
we baptized Christa Sofinowski into a courageous congregation. We asked her to step out in the world, as I
know she already does, to be fierce and love fiercely, to not identify family
by blood but by those who are entrusted to her care. We take one of our earliest baptismal
formulas from Galatians to say that there shall be no barriers to her love
across socioeconomic status, culture and race, gender and sexuality. Politics is about getting things done in the
public realm such that if she has to enter the messiness of it to get stuff
done, we want her to do so. Love demands
that she know. Love demands that we
know. Amen.
