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Pentecost XIX-A: September 29, 2002
H O M I L Y G R I T S
Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year A
September 29, 2002
[The Feast of St. Michael
and All Angels]*
Copyright 2002 by Grant Gallup
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary - Proper 21-A
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the
Lord God. Turn, then, and live.
Psalm 25:1-14 Ad te, Domine, levavi - To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul
Philippians 2:1-13 Work out your own liberation with fear and trembling
Matthew 21:28-32 Tax goudgers and hookers are going into the kingdom of
God ahead of you.
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
Exodus 17:1-7 He called the place "Test" and "Quarrel".
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 Attendite, popule - Hear my teaching, O my people
or
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 as above
Psalm 25:1-9 as above
Philippians 2:1-13 as above
Matthew 21:23-32 as above
The Shakers were a religious group in 18th century New England, who
believed in, and usually practiced the single life. Oscar Wilde may have
had them in mind when in The Importance of Being Earnest he has Canon
Chasuble declare ("with a scholar's shudder") that "The precept as well
as the practice of the Primitive Church was distinctly against
matrimony", to which Miss Prism responds ("sententiously"): "That is
obviously the reason why the Primitive Church has not lasted up to the
present day." Along with some Sunni Muslims they believed in dancing
(or as they called it, "turning") to express their faith. They also were
good at turning the lathe, produced wonderfully simple furniture, and
invented the flat straw broom which is still handmade and sold door to
door by its artisans in Nicaragua. (In the U.S. now, it is mostly seen
around Hallowe'en, and a few of us metaphysicians ride them in the night
sky.) And they gave us a lovely song, which re-emerged to popularity some
years ago, and got itself into
the Hymnal 1982.
"''Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning, we come round right." 1
The call to "turn" comes to us from the prophet Ezekiel. It's a call to
turn around our life together, for a U-turn in our national trajectory
towards disaster. Ezekiel lived in a time like ours, when his country
was going to hell in a hand-basket and everybody was blaming "the
situation" for what was their own irresponsibility. The despairing
conventional wisdom was then, as it is now, that nothing is anybody's
fault, that the forebears have eaten sour grapes and that's why the
children's teeth are grinding. Chickens are now for us coming home to
roost. The West acted violently, and the East reacted violently. No one
wants to have the capacity or the responsibility to end the cycle.
Henry Kissinger as a young Jewish boy ate the sour grapes of the
Holocaust experience, and set the teeth of the world on edge all the
years he ran the White House. What [Time magazine editor] Walter
Isaacson says in a new film on his disastrous career is that "Kissinger
had a very cynical reaction to the Holocaust. Coming out of that horrific
experience, he viewed power as more important than anything else, and
that he needed to be close to the seat of it. He lived his life that way,
and he made a lot bargains. He was not a man guided by a strong moral
compass or great regard for American democracy." Eugene Jarecki, who has
co-directed the film, 2 comments: "As a person coming out of the
Holocaust, and having lost family members in it, he went the way of some
people who go through that experience of developing a real hard line
attitude toward totalitarianism in any form. He saw Communism cast a new
and only slightly different manifestation of the totalitarianism of which
he'd been a victim. Hence, his extraordinary commitment to ending
communism is explained by his Holocaust experience. But his
anti-Communism was important enough, from the way the evidence looks,
that he would go beyond the law to pursue it." "We become like that
which we most despise." Another proverb that explains but does not
justify.
But along comes Ezekiel and says God told me that you are not to live by
such proverbs. As I live, says Yahweh, this proverb shall no more be
used by you, to justify your destruction in the world, to justify your
crimes.
On July 23, an Israeli pilot dropped a one-ton bomb on a house in a dense
residential neighborhood in Gaza. His work was to execute Salah
Shehadeh, a Hamas activist,without trial, but he also slaughtered 16
neighbors, including 11 children and wounded dozens of others. Elana Uri
Avnery on August 24 wrote to him in an Open "Letter to a Pilot", 3
quoting Bialik, the national poet, "Even Satan has not invented the
revenge of a little child." The children eat the sour grapes and will
live to grind the dragon's teeth of violence. Now, alas, it is the
children of Palestine and the Jewish children in the occupied territories
that are being fed a diet of bitter grapes indeed, along with their
mothers and fathers. And the old proverbs still rule: "An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth" but these are lying proverbs, that discount the
possibility of turning, that reject the gospel's call for a nonviolent
response to the most recent act of revenge. George W. Bush, runs on his
exercise treadmill daily, even on Air Force One, but never looks back and
never turns, but leaves the administration of the world to his cellar
gang cabinet. As a friend writes, "When, when--if ever--will we get our
country back? This unelected faux cowboy resident of the Oval Office with
his Charles Addams cast of characters."
On Oct 27 Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, delivered an
"unprecedentedly strong warning to Israel, arguing that the country is
adopting a stance 'incompatible' with the deepest ideals of Judaism, and
that the current conflict with the Palestinians is 'corrupting' Israeli
culture." Rabbi Sacks said, "I regard the current situation as nothing
less than tragic. It is forcing Israel into postures that are
incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals." He said he was
"profoundly shocked" at the recent reports of smiling Israeli servicemen
posing for a photograph with the corpse of a slain Palestinian. "There is
no question that this kind of prolonged conflict, together with the
absence of hope, generates hatreds and insensitivities that in the long
run are corrupting to a culture." His predecessor, Immanuel Jakobovits
sparked outrage more than a decade ago when he condemned Israel for
"lording it over" the Palestinians. Rabbi Sachs calls on orthodox faiths
to realise that difference is not a problem to be managed, but an
'essential' part of creation itself." 4
Don't say that it is the ways of God that are unjust, O murdering Zionist
State of Israel, O sold-out Fundamentalist preachers! O yanquis,
enemigos de humanidad, O desperate Palestinians, who murder in the name
of God, Is it not your ways that are not just? Therefore it is I who
will judge you, every one according to their ways.
We like to say in church that our God is the "Lord of history" but by
that we usually mean only ancient history. "History," wrote James
Baldwin, "does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the
contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it
within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history
is literally present in all that we do." In an editorial comment on
Baldwin's observation, Eric Foner writes 5 "There is nothing unusual or
sinister in the fact that each generation rewrites history to suit its
own needs, or about disagreements within the profession and among the
public at large about how history should best be taught and studied." In
the United States today, and for half a century now, we have been
rewriting (or, most of the time, erasing) the history of our times. One
has to go to such works as Eduardo Galeano's trilogy, Memory of Fire, or
his Open Veins of Latin America, 6 -- to get an alternative view from
that of the Propaganda Ministry which is the mass media and the
domination system's pulpits in the U.S. of A. Some years ago when I went
to Kroch's and Brentano's bookstore in Chicago to look for Galeano's
work, I searched the shelves without success until I asked at the desk,
and was directed to the section marked "Poetry." Was this a flattering
literary criticism, or a dumb dismissal of his trenchant historical
analysis?
Most U.S.ers** think that their nation, the world's last super-power,
is surf-boarding the waves of history, and can ignore the swimmers
drowning in the undertow. Most think that the wars of conquest fought by
Gringolandia have been wars of liberation, fought as generous gifts to
the benighted and enslaved of the world. "Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel" became in the U.S. the doctrine of manifest destiny,
then Kissinger's doctrine of containment, and now the Bushes''
doctrine of world domination. Those of us who have known well one
example of U.S. benevolence, the destruction of the Nicaraguan
Revolution, can remember what the democratic socialism won here in 1979,
and then we saw the return of U.S hegemony after a decade of secret war
and the rape of a nation's hopes. The fathers and mothers of Latin
America have eaten the sour grapes of U.S. benevolence, and the
children's teeth are set on edge. Except that they are now grown ups,
not children, no longer the niños and niñas who are victims of violacíon
by their incestuous Tio Sam. Their incisors have sharpened, their
molars have learned to grind. There is a vineyard here where the grapes
of wrath are stored.
John Brentlinger is an old friend of Casa Ave Maria, a frequent pilgrim
to the holy land of Nicaragua, and former professor of philosophy at the
University of Massachusetts. He has written "the Best of What We Are:
Reflections on the Nicaraguan Revolution" 7, which is the best of what
they have published on the subject. My most advanced English student is
reading it aloud to me each morning while I ride my exercise bicycle, and
he will in a few days read to me Brentlinger's judgment on the "end of
history" as yanqui neoliberalism triumphed with the end of the Sandinista
ascendancy:
J
"During the Sandinista years, I saw this country being clubbed to death
by the United States.
Now, the bourgeoisie is gaudily enjoying its power, and Nicaragua is
suffering even more desperately, though less visibly. The big stick of
the Pentagon and the CIA has been replaced with an economic boa
constrictor: unemployment. The sounds of helicopters and screaming have
stopped, leaving the silence of hungry people and the weak cries of dying
children. . . Nicaragua had scoffed at the old Latin American realities:
in place of misery, food for all, health care for all, education for all,
housing for all. Now the vultures have come home to roost."
John dedicated his book to "the Nicaraguans who struggled" and the title
came from the Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn's song "Nicaragua":
"In the flash of this moment
You are the best of what we are
Don't let them stop you now, Nicaragua."
But every U.S. citizen who paid taxes helped to stop Nicaragua dead in
its tracks. Will she rise again?
Will our terrorized world rise again?
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
* Major Feasts, appointed on fixed days in the Calendar, when they occur
on a Sunday are normally transferred to the first convenient open day
within the week. When desired, however, the Collect, Preface, and one or
more of the Lessons appointed for the Feast may be substituted for those
of the Sunday, except as noted in the rubric "Sundays", on page 16 in the
Book of Common Prayer. Homily Grits for
St Michael and All Angels has been posted to Louie Crew's web site.
** USers is my own appropriate neologism, an abbreviation for United
States-ers, a translation of Estadounidenses, what Central Americans use
instead of the unacceptable term "Americans" as if it applied only to
those who live north of the Rio Bravo and south of Canada.
"Northamericans" is what I used for a long time, until someone pointed
out to me that Mexico is in North America, as well as Canada and
Greenland, a Danish colony called Kalaalit Nunaat by those who live
there. USers also reflects the consumerist capitalism now rampant among
the natives in that part of North America. GMG
1 Hymnal 1982, #554 words, Shaker song, 18th cent.
2 The Trials of Henry Kissinger, a film directed by Alex Gibney and
Eugene Jarecki, Produced in US/UK/Chile , 2002
Distributor: First Run/Icarus Films. Part contemporary investigation and
part historical inquiry, The Trials of Henry Kissinger follows the quest
of one journalist in search of justice. The film focuses on Christopher
Hitchens' charges against Henry Kissinger as a war criminal - allegations
documented in Hitchens' book of the same title.
3 Open Letter to a Pilot. Holy Land Al-Bushra Digest on the WWW . 25 Aug
2002 open letter to Israeli Major General Dan Halutz.
4 The Guardian Tuesday, August 27
5 Eric Foner, Who Owns History: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World.
Hill & Wang, 2002.
6 Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire, a trilogy: Vol. 1, Genesis; Vol. 2,
Faces and Masks, Vol. 3, Century of the Wind: translated by Cedric
Belfrage, New York: Pantheon Books. 1987. Originally published in Spain
1984 as Memoria del Fuego.
7 John Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are: Reflections on the
Nicaraguan Revolution. Amherst, the University of Massachusetts Press,
1995. pp. 293ff.