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Lent IV B: March 30, 2003
H O M I L
Y G R I T S
The
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Refreshment Sunday
Year B - March 30, 2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to
be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this
bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
(Introit) Isaiah 66: Laetare - Rejoice O Jerusalem.
2 Chronicles 36:14-23 He brought up against them the King of the Iraqis
(The gradual) Psalm 122 Laetatus sum - I was glad
Ephesians 2:4-10 For we are what he has made us
John 6:4-15 Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
Numbers 21:4-9 We detest this miserable food
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Confitemini Domino Give thanks to the Lord, for he
is good
Ephesians 2:1-10 We were by nature children of wrath
John 3:14-21 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son
This homily is presented as originally preached at St Andrew's Church,
Chicago, on March 13, 1988 after my return there from a pilgrimage to
Central America with a delegation from the Diocese of Chicago.
The description of this simple meal in the gospel, the meal of peasants,
called to mind immediately the meals which I have shared on pilgrimage in
the last two weeks in Central America. As North Americans we travelled
through some of the poorest communities in the world as in a royal
progress. At the hotel in San Salvador our first morning two weeks ago
we had the options of orange juice, fresh, not frozen concentrate; eggs,
toast, beans with cheese, bananas with cream, a plate of freshly sliced
mangoes, papaya, pineapple, oranges, and watermelon. Even corn flakes.
For lunch one day in Bluefields we had platters of fresh shrimp, sauteed
in a Creole sauce, over mounds of rice--we found out later that it cost
the managers nineteen US dollars a plate, because Nicaraguan currency had
recently been revalued and taken off the dollar standard. A year ago
such a lunch cost two bucks or less. A bottle of beer in Nicaragua now
costs $3.80 in a restaurant whereas a year ago it cost one tenth as
much. Now lest you get the idea that this was a tour arranged by Gourmet
magazine I hasten to add that most of our meals were very simple,
meatless meals in Nicaragua. We stayed at the Jaime Mayer House of
Studies in Managua (associated with Augsburg College in Minneapolis),
where we slept dormitory style; in my room were five double bunks.
Frequently there's no electricity and no running water. The house is
five doors down from the home of Nicaragua's president, Daniel Orega,
whom we were told we could see jogging through the neighborhood if we got
up early enough. Our meals at Jaime Mayer House were more appropriate
for a group of pilgrims in Lent--rice and beans, a salad and fruit
juice, or spaghetti and beans and a salad and fruit juice, or potatoes
and beans and a salad and fruit juice. We had chicken once. But these
meals were themselves far beyond that which most poor people get to eat
most days in Central America. In Nicaragua, the government has little
stores, called expendios, where certain basic needs--rice and beans,
flour and cooking oil, and soap, are rationed out. Those opposed to the
government (and no one is afraid to express their opinions) call this
"communism". I thought of it as a way of sharing, so that everyone got a
little something, rather than those who afford it taking more than their
share.
In El Salvador, a country which gets nearly two million dollars a day
from the United States, to aim guns at its own poor people, and to
slaughter its own poor people, there is no rationing. The rich buy up
what they want and hoard it, and the poor scrabble for a living. There
are refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of displaced people, driven
off their land by the army and the rich (the fabled 'fourteen families'of
great wealth) are hungry and ill clothed and poorly housed. We went to
see the political officer of the U.S. embassy, and I asked him what
percentage of the population owns what percentage of the land? He said,
"I don't know the percentages." He said the basic reason for the war was
"too little land, too many people." We remember what Hitler's solution
was to such a problem in Europe. We went to see General Vides Casanova,*
the minister of defense, whose job it is to defend the rich against the
poor, and he smiled broadly and one of his servants brought us coffee (I
declined to share this offering) and lied to us for over an hour. But he
could hardly deny his permission, safe conduct passes, to us to visit
Suchitoto, a town utterly destroyed by the Army a few years ago, and
Agua Cayo (waterfall) and El Barillio (the little barrel ), resettled in
July of 1986. He had urged us "go to the countryside and talk to the
people--you will see how much they love us." We went, and heard
helicopters circling overhead in the countryside, and when I asked a
little boy, what are those for, in the sky? He replied with all the
honesty and innocence of his five years, "Para los bombas de los
Americanos". In El Barrillio we visited a community where the people
have returned to their land, and in spite of the government, which
refuses them the visits of a doctor or a priest (except an Army chaplain)
they are growing their own corn, and raising chickens. We spent the day
with them. We walked miles around the community--I thought I was having
another cardiac stress test. And when we returned to the center of the
village, the campesinos had rummaged through the community and gotten a
meal together for us--one large dried fish had been soaked and de-salted
and then broiled for us--for twenty of us--and corn tortillas had been
baked for us and red beans had been made ready, and fresh water from
their own well had been mixed with fruit juice for a refresco. And
precious eggs, which are saved for their children, were boiled and heaped
on a plate, that we their guests might have them. Their simple peasant
food, the simple corn tortilla--bread alien to the rich of North
America, and the single dried fish. In the times of the Apostlees such
food was Eucharist, preaching of the IXTHUS, for FISH is the code word
for JESUS CHRIST SON OF GOD LIBERATOR.
In such a meal not only were our bodies refreshed after the day of
pilgrimage around the community, greeting each family, smiling here a
word of encouragement, blessing a new set of twins, handing a granola bar
to a little girl, but our spirits are strengthened for the pilgrimage to
liberation which has begun in Central America. We are encouraged by such
food, to gather up the fragments of such meals, that nothing of their
meaning be lost. That nothing of their nourishment be wasted. There is
food enough in such meals for the nutritional needs of the coming age of
the Kingdom, as the Bible pus it in the language of olden days. In our
time, Kingdom must be spoken of not in terms of Queens and Princes, or of
Elizabeth II and Princess Di,
but of the apostles of the age, the campesinos of Central America and of
other places where God is doing a new thing. The breakfast we shared in
Bluefields the other day with my friend Cleveland McCrae, the Rama Indian
whose family now has shoes thanks to you friends here at ST Andrew's, the
breakfast of fried bread and black coffee (there's no milk except for
infants in Bluefields, where there are no herds) was another Eucharist of
the coming age. We sat outside under a tree--St. Paul says we have been
raised to sit in such heavenly places with Christ Jesus that in the
coming age he might show the immeasurable riches of his XARIS, his grace,
his gifts towards us in Christ Jesus.
One peasant after another spoke to us like Apostles from the first
century. "A refugee camp is no place for campesinos,"one man told us in
El Salvador. "We had to come back and work the land. They called us
communists and tried to destroy our cooperative. Only a few stayed here
after the bombardment killed all the cattle. We thought going to the
capital meant that we would be criminals or beggars and so they accused
us of being subversives because we stayed here. At first they killed
everybody they found here, but then because of our international brothers
and sisters they recognized it wasn't correct to be killing us. They
started to collect the people and take them to camps instead. We had to
come back and work the land. We told our brothers and sisters we have
this land and we are going to work it. The Armys said No, you can't
come here to take this land, it now belongs to other people We said we
have paid nine years for this land and we have come back to work it, and
to educate our children. Because now they will be the new future. We
have achieved coming here with thousands of sacrifices. The Army doesn't
like the way we work because we do our work collectively. You know
Christ said Love one another, but the Army doesn't want us to work
together. They want to make a better world by destroying it. I don't
hate the ones up in the mountains (the guerrillas). I don't hate anybody
in the world. You are from another country but you are our brothers and
sisters. We have to find a way for the world to change.
That's all there is, really, to the gospel of God. "We have to find a
way for the world to change." How do we begin?
Let us begin with the bread and the fish.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 2nd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
* Salvadoran Generals Convicted of Wartime Atrocities (copyright New
California Media)
El Tecolote, R.M. Arrieta, Aug 07, 2002 - After almost a month of
riveting, harrowing and sometimes gruesome testimony, two retired
Salvadoran generals were held liable by a jury in Florida for human
rights violations committed during the civil war in El Salvador two
decades ago -- and were ordered to pay millions of dollars to three
torture victims: a doctor, a church worker and a professor. The landmark
decision -- handed down unanimously by the jury -- found Carlos Eugenio
Vides Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia guilty on all counts, and
awarded 54.6 million to the plaintiffs who claimed they were brutally
tortured by Salvadoran security forces between 1979-83. The civil suit
was filed against the former generals by Juan Romagoza, Neris Gonzalez,
and Carlos Mauricio. Both Garcia, 69 and Vides Casanova, 64, retired in
South Florida in 1989. The lawsuit centered on the Torture Victim
Protection Act, which is designed to hold military commanders responsible
for the actions of their troops; and the Alien Torture Claims Act, both
allow victims redress in U.S. courts, no matter where the offenses have
taken place. The suit alleged that former defense ministers Garcia and
Vides Casanova exercised command over members of the National Guard and
National Police -- who committed atrocities against opponents of the
military regime of El Salvador during the height of the civil war. "We
sent a message that impunity is no longer acceptable," said plaintiff
Mauricio, a San Francisco resident, who reportedly wept along with
plaintiff Gonzalez as the verdict was read in court. Said Garcia in an
interview with Associated Press, "We consider the decision unfair. One
would have to prove who committed the abuse. Until now, no one knows who
committed that abuse." "In order to fight torture, we must fight
impunity," said Mauricio. "This case is about justice; about being able
to speak for the others who could not make it to the courtroom, for the
thousands killed and tortured and left on the streets. They must not be
forgotten." Accusations of Torture During his torture Mauricio was
severely beaten, strung up by his hands and starved for eight days. At
one point, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) made an
inspection visit to the cells and interviewed Mauricio, which was
confirmed by a letter presented to the jury
Gonzalez, when asked about her purpose for becoming a plaintiff, said:
"To tell the truth, to denounce what happened to me, to tell of the
torture. I have had this with me for more than 20 years," she said,
adding, "this is the best offering I can give to my son." Gonzalez, who
was eight months pregnant at the time she was tortured, was raped and
stomped on. Her son died two months after birth as a result of the
injuries. She was forced to watch the torture and execution of another
prisoner and drink his blood, and was left for dead by the national
guardsmen. In addition to receiving electric shocks and other forms of
brutal torture, plaintiff Romagoza, a former surgeon, testified that he
can no longer perform surgery because one of his arms was left numb by a
torture device using wires. The case is one of the few in which a foreign
commander has been held liable under the doctrine of command
responsibility for war crimes committed by his troops. In depositions
taken last year, the retired generals stated that they didn't recall
warnings by any American officials about human rights abuses by the
military. "I never had knowledge that torture was performed in the armed
forces," said Garcia. During the trial, one witness, former U.S
Ambassador Edwin Corr, conceded that the security forces were responsible
for the majority of human rights abuses and that torture was common. When
pressed as to whether Vides Casanova knew about abuses committed by the
National Guard, Corr admitted that Vides Casanova was aware of the
allegations and "had to be aware of the bodies in the streets." Caught on
Video Former U.S. Ambassador Robert White testified that during his
tenure, he had seen a videocassette of the gunning down of a group of
young boys. He testified that afterwards he urged General Garcia to stop
the violence. He told Garcia that the only result of such action would be
to radicalize the entire population. White recollected that Garcia's
reaction was "simply to shrug." Joshua Sondheimer with the Center for
Justice & Accountability, a San Francisco-based group that initiated the
lawsuit in 1999 said the case "sets an important precedent that
commanders can be held responsible when they should know that their
subordinates are torturing and killing civilians, and they give a green
light for such abuses to continue by doing nothing to stop it." Sandra
Colliver, executive director of CJA, said that the hope is that "the
generals will be deported. Florida should not be a retirement community
for human rights abusers." Defense attorney Kurt Klaus said the generals
cannot pay the verdict, and added that they cannot afford to appeal. "It
is not a matter of money," said Mauricio. "None of us are looking for
money. We are seeking justice."