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Easter V-C May 9, 2004
H o m i l y G r i t s
EASTER V-C
May 9, 2004
Copyight 2004 Grant Gallup - permission given for free
distribution in fair use or quotation )
Almighy God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so
perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the
life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to
eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary
Acts 13: 44-52 So they shook the dust off their feet in protest against
them
or Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18 You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am
holy
Psalm 145 or 145:1-9 Exaltabo te Deus I will exalt you O God my King
Revelation 19: 1, 4-9 And the angel said to me, "Write this:"
or Acts 13: 44-52 as above
John 13: 31-35 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
An epigram heard frequently among Bible students is that "Jesus preached
the coming of the Kingdom, but what happened was the Church." And what
came to pass eventually are the hundreds of squabbling denominations that
are some of them house-broken and speak kindly to each other in
ecumenical circumstances, and at other times snarl at or bite each other
in public places. While they are learning how to behave towards those
most like themselves, they reserve the right to assert their own
exclusive claims of access to the Almighty, and to disdain those most
distant from themselves. There are divisions as well in the other great
religions of the world, and the Muslim Sunnis and Shi'ites, divided for
centuries, have found they have common ground in resisting the infidel
Bushite evangelicals marauding and urinating in the face of Muslim Iraq.
The abuse of prisoners of war by U.S. and British troops in Iraq should
not surprise us. Look at the models we have in our Western world. Last
week the Vatican committed the sin of sodomy, which is inhospitality, on
the Muslims of Cordoba, in Spain, when it refused permission for a
Muslim group to use the cathedral for prayers. They seem to have
forgotten that the ancient building was built and dedicated to God as a
mosque, before the Christians of Spain took it from them. The least they
could have done would have been to acknowledge their debt to the
architects. Islam for centuries has had more respect than that for
Christians, as "people of the book". So that a Tradition from the
Prophet (1) is given to say: "If anyone testifies that there is no God
but Allah alone, who has no partner, that Muhmmad is His servant and
messenger, that Jesus is Allah's servant and messenger, the son of His
handmaid, His word which he cast into Mary and a spirit from Him, and
that paradise and hell are real, Allah will cause him to enter paradise
no matter what he has done." .That dictum is now being severely tested by
our Knight in Air Force flight suit with his banner of "Mission
Accomplished."
Meanwhile, back at the ranch we have U.S. RMO's (Religious Maintenance
Organiaitons) locked in a mutual stranglehold
over the issue of the full inclusion of Gay and Lesbian people in their
various franchises, called "denominations." In high school, I knew a
radical Swedish covenant dissenter who referred to them all as
"damnations" and would then giggle and apologize for his
mispronunciation. These damnations, these churches are the "managed
care" providers of spiritual benefits. They each seem to have a tailored
clientele waiting for them, with the same kind of "freedom of choice"
that the free market provides in cars, toasters, TVs or tennis shoes.
There's Wallmart and there's Nieman Marcus. There's the Mom and Pop
store at the corner and the fabulous Teasure Island Super Market uptown.
Even in Nicaragua we have the sprawling, smelly and noisy Eastern Market,
filled with hustlers and pickpockets, glue-sniffing children and
discounted goods. And we have La Colonia and La Union, me-first world
supermarkets where you can buy asparagus and broccoli from Costa Rica,
Roquefort cheese from France, Butterball turkeys from the U.S., and fine
red wine from Spain. There are little churches that meet in homes and
we have a new Roman Catholic cathedral, bought and paid for by Domino's
Pizza's right-wing owner, who also bought the evangelical
teachers'college and renamed it Ave Maria University. The gospel has
metastasized .itself throughout the capitalist world, taking on its
coloration and its tastes and styles.
Now during Eastertide we hear from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles,
a book which tells us what life and death were like at the dawning of the
Kingdom, or in what we call "the Infant Church." It looks quite
different from what we have just described. Luke's gospel had ended with
the Resurrection of Christ, and now in the second volume of his book he
tells us he will follow up what "Jesus began to do and to teach" with
what the apostles began to do and to teach. It is noteworthy that Luke
did not then go on to write a book about the immortality of the soul,
about everlasting life, about reincarnation or about how we will all come
back some day as movie stars or butterflies. There's nothing about
transmigration of souls or how Shirley Maclain was Cleopatra in a former
life. There's not a word about how the future is to be determined by our
astrological signs and we need only know where our stars are at a given
moment. Paul goes about instead calling humbug by its right name, for
the result of Jesus' Resurrection is for the Apostles a Revolution in
Everything, including an end to religion The Infant Church, like a
feisty child in her terrible threes, began to take everything apart--not
only false religions, but the Empire itself. The Book of Acts deals with
what Christianity was meant to look like, when it was still a subversive
movement, when what was expected was the imminent return of Jesus, when
Adventism wasn't something invented by Ellen G. White. The Book of the
Acts of the Apostles tells us what that New World Order was going to be
like when the gospel was hot off the griddle
Some elements of the life of the community of the Resurrection were
these:
(1) Paul teaches that the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, had become more--he had
become the Liberator not only of the human race, but of all creation.
What we have in Messiah/Christ is a new Galactic Order, and its all about
politics and the reorganization of wealth and power.
(2) The community has furthermore become convinced that without a cross
there is no crown, and Stepehen the protomartyr has the very name of
"crown" for that is what "stephanos" means in Greek. But we can't get
crowned by Jesus without the cross of Jesus. So Paul teaches in his
liberation theology that Liberation comes through struggle, pain, and
suffering, and not through painkillers and prozac, not through pap
religion and popcorn prosperity theology. No pain, no gain. The Church
is a wrestler, and it is sometimes hit-and-run, sometimes scissors-hold,
sometimes bold surprises, night time chases and nick-of-time escapes, as
if it were a made for TV thriller.
(3) The Church asserts that it is a rival government and a rival
economy: people are to be fed not by endless development or the widening
of world markets, but by sharing. Sharing! The Reign of God is one of
abundance, not of scarcity. "I am come that they might have life",
Jesus had declared, "and that they might have it more abundantly." More
than enough of it for all! The diaconal ministries were instituted
because some outsiders wanted to bed fed! The widows of Greeks are
neglected, so we reorganize the Church itself. And the Church is
characterized by growth and by life in the power of the Spirit, in
response to human need, and is known for its risk and adventure.
(4) The Church claims everything for its Leader and Lord. It does not
back into a corner and say "Separation of Church and State." It says
instead, "Let's overthrow the empire by acting as if it doesn't matter."
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" and the Empire does
not then dare to say, "But I am an alternative Way, with another Truth,
and another Life." Jesus said, "Go everywhere and preach, go everywhere
and DO the gospel." Edward Gibbon in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" blames the Christian revolution for this mischief of overthrowing
the Empire. The Church doesn't take the credit.
The day came, didn't it, when the Church began to back off its mission.
It began to excuse the Empire and lay blame on the pesky Jews. It began
to say, "Who us? Turn the world upside down? No way. Upset the status
quo? Us? You got to be kidding." We're a part of it now.
Are these in fact all lies that we read in the Book of the Acts? Dos
Paul really say, "Oh, you've made a mistake accusing us of claiming Jesus
to be a King. It's all a misunderstanding--for we only meant it in a
spiritual way, that Jesus has a kingdom in the sky, in the sweet by and
bye, and we mean no harm where we have been arrested by mistake." Paul
made a mistake all right--he thought the Empire would let him off the
hook, and that because he was a Roman citizen, he would get a fair deal
and justice in Rome. He lost his head along with his hat. The fact is
that within a short time all the church's leaders were either jailed,
executed, on the run, or in exile. Peter himself saw what was coming, and
the metaphors in I Peter 2:-10 say very clearly that something new is
happening: we are like newborn babes, he says, we are like the stones in
a building going up, for we are a new royal priesthood, all of us, we
are an ethnos hagion, a holy ethnicity. What is my race? Not Caucasian,
but Christian. Not African, but Christian. Not Judean, but Christian.
What is my nationality? Christian! what is my color? Christain! The
Christian is a new kind of Human Being. WE are the New Humanity.
Everything was threatened by such a claim. And everything is still
threatened by that underlying fact, and when Christians take the gospel
of God as seriously as it is taken in the Book of the Acts of the
Apostles.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6, the question is asked, "What is the meaning of
our liturgical recitations and repetitions? What is the meaning of these
celebrations? And the answer is given that we are calling up God's past
action into our present, to engage its power now in our own struggles.
The Greek word for this is anamnesis, and we learn it early on in
sacramental theology. We are not merely commemorating or memorializing
the past but the effect is that of the time machine, where we seize the
past and drag it into the present so we can enter into its power again,
so we can be a part of it now. Our history does not become isolated in
the past tense, but becomes transtemporal, it moves to us across time
into the present tense and present tension. God is even now bringing
us out of captivity. God is even now giving land to the landless in
South Africa, in the West Bank, and on the West Side of Chicago. The
pillar of cloud hovers over Guatemala, the pillar of fire glows in the
sky over Nicaragua's volcanoes. Are there to be casinos or day care
centers in La Habana? It was a question asked on a billboard in Havana
when I visited there. The issue is shall the Pharoah of multinational
corporations take the land and its fruits, or shall God's people have a
land of abundance and hope.
Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." Many residences.
But Scripture doesn't say in that house there'll be split-levels, Playboy
mansions and townhouses for Northamericans and Europeans, but for the
rest of the world there's to be favelas and asentamientos, built in the
midst of dumps like La Chureca, the rubbish mountain in Managua, for the
poor to scrabble out a living death.
Believers--Jewish, Christian, Muslim--have an agenda in the world today
and it is the same agenda we've all had since our foundation acts and our
founding prophets and apostles: Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.
Shall we once again pick up the Oracles of God, and our acts of the
Apostles and the Gospels and find that our agenda is to turn the world
upside down and to preach the Liberator, the poor man of Nazareth, who
was murdered by the Empire and has been raised and is alive again, and is
here to rearrange the world. And to live with us the gospel of life in a
New World where we are receiving this government from God, this Empire
> from Christ, this Peole's Republic from Jesus. Yes, Lord! Even so, Come
Lord Jesus. Maranatha.
.
GRANT M. GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
Apartado RP-10, 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) reported by Abu Hurayrah in Tabrizi, Mishkat al-masabih, I:ll., by
Wali Al-Din Muhammad, b. 'Abdallah al-Khatib al-Tabrizi. Translated
James Robson. (Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, reprint, 1990.).