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Pentecost 5 Proper 9C July 4 2004
H o m i l y G r i t s
The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost Year C
Proper 9C - RC 14 th Sunday Ordinary Time
July 4, 2004
© Copyight 2004 Grant Gallup - permission given for free
distribution in fair use or quotation )
O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and
our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Maternal Spirit, that we may be
devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure
affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you
and the Maternal Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
¶ Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
Isaiah 66: 10-16 As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you
Psalm 66: or Ps.66:1-8 Jubilate Deo
Galatians 6: (1-10) 14-18 Bear one another's burdens and in this way
fulfill the law of Christ
Luke 10: 1-12, 16-20 I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of
wolves
There's an image in the first reading today of a gigantic Mother, so big
that she makes the Statue of Liberty look tiny. Isaiah's image of
Jerusalem as a nursing mother, large enough that a nation could be
carried on her lap, generous enough that she could feed all the families
of the earth; a joyful mother, bouncing a continent on her knees, feeding
a planet at her breasts, and with the gifts of all peoples of the
universe flowing towards her in flood tide. The prophet's image of the
nation is that of Mother of Exiles, of hope for all those who have been
imprisoned, alienated, expelled, deported, oppressed. It is an image that
immediately reminds Isaiah of God herself, and he hears her say, "As one
whom a Mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be
strengthened." Motherhood as an image of the nation is an image we need
to revive, as Motherhood as an aspect of God is an image we need to take
> from the margins and put at the center of our prayers and our praxis. I
long suspected there might even be a word for loyalty to the Mother, and
in the Oxford English Dictionary sure enough there is such a word, and it
is Matriotism. It's the parallel word for Patriotism, and if we can
think of the nation as Patria, stern, strong, armed to the teeth,
rampaging the world in a uniform--a male image (Uncle Sam, Ronnie Rambo,
and George W. Bush in flight suit with padded bulge), we can also think
of the nation as a female image, a maternal one. Matrix. Mater.
Matriotism. But what kind of female image? A Playboy's Playgirl Bunny
coquette? (Notice, the Playman and the Playwoman have not yet been
called to commerce.) A gigantic Sphinx, recumbent at the Nile's side
in Egypt? The 270 foot high Motherland of Volgograd, in Russia, with a
sword in her hand, taller than the statue in New York harbor? The media
insists upon calling our great green colossus "Miss Liberty". The poem
is called "The New Colossus" but the name Emma Lazazrus gave to her in
the poem itself seems to have been forgotten. She is named "Mother of
Exiles." All kinds of exiles, willing and unwilling ones. My paternal
ancestors came in 1630 from Dorset, Puritans eager for their exile from
Anglicanism. The maternal grandparents came fleeing poverty in Germany
in the 1880's, to plant potatoes in northern Wisconsin, and cleverly
taught me the Lutheranism that brought me back to Church. Some of our
ancestors came gladly to Gringolandia, through Ellis Island. Others came
unwillingly through the seasoning process of the west Indies; some came
here to gladly forget their past, to surrender their identities, to
change their names, to forget their Mother tongues. Others were
deliberately separated to force them to forget culture and identity, to
disremember all connections to their Motherland. For several
centuries, the lamp uplifted beside the golden door called millions to
come lay their labor at the feet of the New Capitalist Colossus astride
the world. The Mother of Exiles to whom Emma wrote is an embarrassment
to the present ruling class in the Empire. They want a big dumb broad
to deal with, a Stepford Wife, too dumb to turn off the TV and too wimpy
to take to the streets and protest the Bush kakistocracy, the Blair
blasphemies. The Bush bigots now would stop Emma Lazarus at the border
if they found that she never married, and wrote a poetic Lesbian
fantasy. What joy, to have a Jewish Lesbian's poem incised into the
foundation stone of the Mother of Exiles. (1)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
But it's not over yet. There's another model for God in Isaiah's mind,
and it's the image of God only hinted at in the flame at the end of the
torch, at the end of the arm, the metaphor of a fire and a fire storm,
for the anger of God and the rebuke of purgatorial flames. For by fire
will the Lord execute judgement, and with a flaming sword. The Mother of
Exiles in New York harbor seems these days blind and deaf and mute, and
she may have got that way like most U.S.ers, from too much television,
too much CNN propaganda lite, too much acquiescent self-censorship by a
media wholly owned by right wing millionaires and slanted to their
taste. The Mother of Exiles has closed her eyes and closed her borders
and turned her back on the tired and poor, on huddled masses who no
longer look to her to breathe free. The ones we welcome now are sports
heroes looking to become rich celebrities in the land that treats them as
gods of the market. Self-exiles from Iraq like Ahmed Chalabi, U.S.
puppet now looking for a new owner. "Do not be deceived," Paul writes
today: "God is not mocked. Whatever you plant you will surely reap."
The duty to correct each other in gentleness, to bear one another's
burdens, to engage in self-criticism, to judge our own conduct in the
light of what we preach to other people and other nations, and not by
invidious comparisons and arrogant rankings that insist that our Me-First
World lives are worth more to history and its God than the lives of the
Two Thirds World. That our religion, which has done at least as much
harm as it has done good in human history, and indeed in animal and plant
history, is somehow the final word of God.
On the 4th of July 1986 my friend Studs Terkel was on Ted Koppel's show
"Nightline" when Koppel bragged, "Well Studs, the U.S. isn't so bad as
you make it out to be--we still take more exiles than all the other
countries put together." Studs said, "Wait a minute. Let's not compare
ourselves to others, let's compare our conduct to what it should be."
The U.S. in the 80's took lots of exiles fleeing the justice of
socialism, but turned away those fleeing the fascist dictatorships it had
installed in Central America. Today, it fears to take in even those who
are ready to enlist in its self-righteousness, and jails those who
object to killing Iraqis as the price of citizenship. In the avalanche
of wholly-owned media pouring praise on the finally defunct ikon of
capitalist triumph in the 80's, Father Miguel D'Escoto, who was Foreign
Minister of Nicaragua in those years, spoke up in Managua about only one
of Reagan's crimes against humanity:
Of course Reagan is now dead, and I, for one, would like to say only
nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to
the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray
that God in his infinite mercy and
goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having
been responsible for the deaths of
some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes
he committed in the name of
what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy. More perhaps than any
other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the
U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact
the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples.
Reagan. . . was known as the great communicator, and I believe that is
true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a
good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies
without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how
we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent
synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by
demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush is
today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny. He said
to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about.
So, Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people
who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that; criminal murderous
interventions in my country will go on for what, 50 years or more. (2)
Jesus teaches us, his Church, another way. He says to us, "I send you
out as lambs amidst wolves." But the lifestyle of this USA is to be
wolfish. If you are a lamb, the way you survive is to get into a wolf's
clothing. Look like a wolf, act like a wolf, even if you're not. The
world condemns and is fearful of wolves in sheep's clothing, but the
compromised Christian is a creature not be feared but to be pitied, for
the believer who accepts the world's ways is a lamb in wolf's clothing.
Jesus says the way to stay out of the wolf's way is to carry nothing that
wolves want. No purse, no bag, no Guccis. Purse snatchers don't bother
folks who don't have purses. In Nicaragua, the poorest folk wear no
shoes but go barefoot or in rubber chinelas. A hungry wolf looks for a
fat butt, not a skinny one. So Jesus'taching is to lose weight and don't
pursue the consumer capitalist lifestyle. No extras. Live with
evangelical poverty. Gospel poverty is not the same thing as
sociological poverty. That is, the lifestyle of simplicity is voluntary,
it is a choice superior to being rich. Jesus says, Less is More. Many
of us who bear the name of the poor man of Nazareth (but we don't call
ourselves Jesus Christians unfortunately, just "Christians"--- "little
Messiahs." But the messiah style Jesus taught us is not the one we
wanted, with its poverty, purity, and partnership. Jesus is our God's
first name.
Eric Gill wrote in 1939 for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, "When we
speak of chastity, we do not mean something evil. We do not mean the
evil chastity, the enforced chastity of young people who would but cannot
marry. . . When we speak of obedience, we do not mean something evil.
We do not mean the evil obedience of slaves--the servile obedience of
factory hands ('coolies') -- humans reduced to a sub-human condition of
intellectual responsibility--whose only responsibility is to do what they
are told--who are only fully human when they are not working--whose only
reason for working is the pay they get for doing it--whose only reason
for obedience is fear of the 'sack'. When we speak of poverty, we do
not mean evil poverty--destitution, penury, nakedness, starvation,
homelessness--the evil poverty of those who are deprived of the just
necessities of living, whose one thought is to get food and warmth, and
when fed and warmed, to sleep." (3)
Jesus says Less is Better because more can share that way. Carry no
purse, as a purse is for wealth, for extra cash. Wages are enough, and
you can trade healing for hospitality. "Eat what is set before you"-- He
talks here to disciples who for the first time are going to Gentile
territory and tells them, "Eat what Gentiles offer you". Jesus means for
his Church to practice incarnation, so the Church in Missionary Africa is
not to make honorary 19th century English gentry out of Nigerians, nor
liberate the rest of the world to practice its uptight homophobia and
imitate upper class wealth and racism. Evangelical poverty must learn
> from sociological poverty what its own best students learn--that it is
people who are important, not profits. Jesus calls us to announce Peace
wherever we go, to be a healing community, to go barefoot, to dispense
with what we don't need.
Building houses for the poor, rehabbing slums for the homeless is an
admirable form of charity, but charity is the lowest form of justice.
And justice begins the way God begins justice-- with listening to the
cries of he oppressed, and not walking away from the cries of the people
our national priorities have tortured and tormented and ridiculed, exiled
and bombed in our terrorist crusades. .
Jesus gives ten commandments for our mission: (l) start with prayer,
(2) jack up your courage, (3) live simple lives, (4) be peace people, (5)
depend on others, (6) practice stability, (7) accept hospitality,
(remember the world was here before the Church arrived, and we are its
guests, (8) heal the sick with prayer and medicine, and (9) roll with the
punches, roll like a rolling stone; and (10) know where your authority
lies: it is the authority of Jesus our Liberator.
When the disciples return, having been tested by their struggle in
mission, they are delighted and Jesus is delighted with them. How come?
There are still only seventy. No great crowds follow them, and they
don't have their empty purses filled now with imperial currency. They
are still barefoot, more raggedy than when they left. But they rejoice,
because demons have been subject to them. Jesus is thrilled and says
"Go ahead and be glad. Joy is appropriate for my Church. The gospel is
an upper, not a downer. Be glad not so much in the fact that demons get
out of your way, but be glad that your names are written in God's
book. "I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven while you were
out there confronting the fallen world with Resurrection-- I saw the
Satan drop right away from our inner space and into outer space, I saw
evil's strategic defense initiative fall apart, because you practice what
you preach. The Reign of God swept by and singed the devil's tail..
Lies and delusions are but the snakes and scorpions we walk over, they
are the fantasies of race and capitalism, of wealth and fame. Good news
is that these cannot harm us, and Jesus calls us as healed people, as
recovering and resurrected friends, to heal sickness in the land, and
health to the planet.
Jesus watches still to see an end to the power of death in our society,
to see an end to the devil of profits over people, to see an end to a
Church hankering for life styles of the rich and famous, a Church that
unloads its baggage so that it is ready for the road
Paul urges the Christian community at Galatia to adopt a model of
community which is mutually supportive, committed to sharing the
responsibilities of common life. He reminds us that the only "badges",
the only "marks" worth boasting of are the wounds of Jesus, battle scars
of living the gospel. Far be it from me, he says, to brag about anything
but the Cross. We come to the gospel reading for today. We are taught
by the Liberator himself that the mission of the Church, his Church, is
not to be one that could be mistaken for the lifestyles of the rich and
famous. That TV program was a class in the real religion of the U.S. ,
which is acquisitiveness from ruling class to underclass.
It apparently had the good sense to slink away in shame sometime in the
90's.
GRANT M. GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 3rd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
(1) Emma Lazazrus (1849-1887) "The New Colossus" Norton Anthology of
Poetry, 4th ed. New York & London 1970. H.E. Jacob's 1949 biography of
her said she never married because her emotional world was "fixed so
firmly on her father ..." In 1951, Arthur Zeiger took an unpublished
manuscript poem, "Assurance," as evidence of Lazarus' "lesbian fantasy."
Here it is:
Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed
Together in my dream, through some dim glade,
Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss.
The air was dank with dew, between the trees,
The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent.
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze
Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went,
As sporting with our passion. Low and deep
Spake in mine ear her voice: "And didst thou dream,
This could be buried? This could be sleep?
And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem,
Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!"
Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.
(2) The Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110
www.freedomarchives.org
(3) Eric Gill, "Peace and Poverty", in Last Essays, London, Jonathan
Cape, 1942.