Shoes to die

delivered on August 7, 2011 at Sayville Congregational United Church of Christ

During the extended period that began with the Enlightenment, the guiding premise for modern thinkers was that human reason and the scientific method alone could create a better world. In many ways reason was deified, attained the status of a god, with many abandoning the notion of salvation in Christ for the notion of the self-salvation of humanity. This became the great project of modernity, to create a better world through reason and enlightened self-interest. Mathematics and the physical sciences began to kick the legs out of the edifice of the Enlightenment before the First World War, with Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity adding uncertainty to what had seemed known. But it was the First World War itself that killed modernity, as well as countless millions of humans. For it was science and reason that produced the weapons of mass destruction and terrible killing machines used in the conflict. If the Enlightenment was not discredited after the First World War, it certainly would be after the Second, with the use of science in the Manhattan project and the birth of nuclear weapons.

Though post-modernism as a way of thinking was born in those early years after the Great War, in many ways, cultural worship was simply transferred from reason and therefore the human mind to markets and therefore human production. Wall Street and the Factory became the new houses of worship, even though the Depression proved once and for all that self-regulating markets and enlightened self-interest were fantasies, less real the the wildest myths in scripture. Churches began to organize themselves like businesses, economic theories became scripture, and the consumer became the new priest, with religion becoming one more consumer good. To this day we live in a world where many Christians view themselves as consumers of religious services, individuals willing to fire the minister or change churches at any moment they are not made happy and comfortable by the church product. They return to the religion market in search of a more satisfying brand, failing to understand that the Christian is not the receiver of Christianity, but the producer of it, that it is our job to make Christianity in the world, not to buy it from our church.

Among the first theologians to challenge the concept of market as God and religion as goods and services were two Germans, Johann Metz, a Roman Catholic, and Jürgen Multmann, a Calvinist. They re-established the centrality of kingdom work in this world in the ministry of Jesus. Let me repeat that, it’s pretty important. The Christianity that developed through the Enlightenment and that continues in many circles during this era of consumer religion is all about the individual and is aimed at a postmortem state, at achieving eternal life for one’s own self, with belief relegated to the private sphere. It is about “me,” produces absurd language about a “personal” Jesus, is focused on heaven, and so need not care about the injustices of this world. Metz and Multmann both moved in the direction of a church that was at once active in the public sphere and that had the prophetic call for God’s just and caring kingdom in view at all times.

If it was Germans that laid the theological foundation for a new theology, it was Latin Americans that lived it into the world. Gustavo Gutiérrez claimed “that Jesus’s preaching, lifestyle and eschatological message is a religious message and yet one with political implications.” In confronting the brutal economic injustices of their context, many Latin American liberation theologians were categorized with Marxists and other advocates for social justice.

Ironically, the central figure in today’s worship, was not a liberation theologian. In fact, he was a man of the institution, a bureaucrat, serving the Roman Church in El Salvador. In a country where twelve families controlled almost every acre of arable land and in which 2% of the population controlled 95% of the wealth, it should be no surprise that there would be an uprising. In 1932 an initial rebellion was met with the slaughter of more than 30,000 peasants at the hand of government-paid death squads. When rebellions developed again in the 1970’s, El Salvador became one more setting for the proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Once again, the Salvadoran military and government-paid death squads engaged in wholesale slaughter to suppress the rebellion.

Óscar Romero was a conservative priest, and the progressives were very unhappy when he was named first Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador and later Bishop of Santiago de María. It was a surprise to everyone, including Romero, when he was elevated to Archbishop of San Salvador. But God had plans for Romero. Shortly after he became Archbishop, Romero was confronted by the assassination of his friend, Father Rutilio Grande, by government forces. It was as if Romero saw reality for the first time, not only in the government’s suppression of progressive priests, but in the horrific poverty of the campesinos, in the blood that flowed in the streets. When the barefoot peasants fought, they were literally fighting for shoes to die for, for the literal bread of life. Romero began speaking out against the oppression and bloodshed. He asked the United States to stop funding the rulers and their armies, and boldly called on soldiers to disobey orders to kill civilians.

On March 24th, 1980, while celebrating Mass in the small chapel of a hospital, Romero was assassinated. An audio recording and witness accounts reveal that he was shot as he was elevating the consecrated chalice. Poignant in any branch of Christianity, this was especially powerful within the Catholic context, for the Archbishop’s blood was spilled as he held aloft the cup that actually contained Christ’s blood. When he fell, his blood literally mixed with that of Jesus upon the altar.

Romero is today one of the ten martyrs of the 20th century honored at the Anglican Westminster Abbey, along with Pastors Bonhoeffer and King. There is a statue of him in the National Cathedral in Washington, again, a church outside of his own tradition. He is beloved and honored by Christians around the world. In our own tradition we find the Iglesia San Romero de las Americas, an Open and Affirming Latino UCC congregation in Manhattan. The move towards honoring him within his own tradition, what is know as the canonization process, has been stalled since that church has been taken over by reactionaries and others of the right-wing who suspect Romero of communist tendencies.

The history is powerful, but the story would be incomplete if we did not acknowledge that some measure of justice, some improvements in the life of the campesinos, did result from the violent struggle on the late 20th century, despite US efforts in support of the dictators. Some have been brought to justice, some land reform was enacted, and if impoverished Latinos still risk life and limb for the opportunity to cut our grass and wash our dishes, things are at least better.

I was able to see some of the good work done by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua while traveling there, the co-ops, the numerous schools that made an illiterate nation a literate one. But I also took the ferry up the Rio Escondido under a Sandinista machine gun nest, for US funded contras were still attacking the peasants.

The real message in the Romero story is not that we have to take risks to build the just and caring Kingdom of God. We do. We know that. If we are serious about the gospel, it must burn within us, which is a whole lot more than a little inconvenient, for it demands nothing less than your whole life properly oriented, that is, with God at the center, not you. But that’s not the most important thing we can learn from San Romero. No, the lesson to be learned is in his transformation. He was just a guy, and not a particularly brave one or cool one. Not a revolutionary. Not a leader. He was committed to spiritual practice, to examining his conscience for sin and repenting when he found it, to an active life of prayer, and to spiritual direction, that is personal spiritual guidance, from a trusted brother in Christ. This is a simplified version of his spiritual life, there was much more to it, but some of it came in the particular forms of Catholic clergy practice. But the things you can adopt are right there: repent when you sin, pray without ceasing, and seek spiritual counsel.

Like a fertile field prepared in advance, Romero had prepared his soul, so that when God opened the door, when God thrust Romero into a situation in which courage was required, in which clarity of vision was required, he was ready. God has plans for you. You are here. You woke up this morning. What more do you need to know? I’m not talking about a Rick Warren-style puppet master God intent on micro-managing your life. But I am talking about a God who bent creation toward creativity, transcendence and love. A God that tugs at your heart and calls you to become fully who you were made to be. And most of us, young or old, aren’t there yet. There is more in us to be discovered. God has plans for you. God does not stop calling because you are old. God does not stop calling because you are tired.

God has great plans for you. Maybe you won’t need to be martyred… let’s pray that you don’t! Maybe what God has in mind is small, a chance to change one life by sharing the Good News with someone at the grocery store, by feeding one hungry child. God has plans for you, and like Romero, you are called to prepare yourself, to be ready to answer when God calls. Here I am Lord. Is it I Lord? And then, prepared through faithful spiritual practice, through prayer, through taking your spiritual life seriously, you will answer. I will go Lord, where you lead me. Will you? Will you reject consumer religion, the self-worship of reason, the deification of Wall Street and goods? Are you ready to embrace the God of Sojourner Truth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Are you ready to embrace the God of San Óscar? Prepare your soul, for God still has plans for you. Amen.

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