[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
Christmas Eve
H O M I L
Y G R I T
S
December 24, 2005 Year B
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary -
Isaiah 9:2-4,6-7 Joy in dividing up the plunder when oppression's yoke is
smashed
Psalm 96 or 96:1-4, 11-12 Cantate Domino
Titus 2:11-14 The grace of God has appeared, bringing liberation to all
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20) This is the Sign: A child wrapped in rags.
____________________________________________________________________________
Liberation homily notes for Christmas Eve.
In Nicaragua Christmas Eve IS "la Noche Buena" and the day
after is for resting up and eating leftovers. Families gather for a feast
before or after the Misa de Gallo--the rooster eucharist--at
midnight. Roosters can be heard singing the antiphons in much of
Managua, a huge overgrown
city of two civilizations--rich and poor--where oxen bring carts of
firewood as if in a rural village, and where roosters wake the
houseguests at the Casa, while 747's fly the bourgeoisie to Miami over
the roofs like Santa, who doesn't make many stops here. The
meal is often a big gallina navideña, or a capon, stuffed with potato,
carrot and raisins, or in prosperous families you might find a chompipe
(indigenous turkey) on the table. The poor will have gallo pinto, but
this "specled rooster" is only their name for red beans and
rice. The Vigil is thus the main course of
Navidad, and Christmas Day itself becomes a leftover. U.S.ers are
thought quite odd for keeping the 25th as the main event.
Santa Claus, now imported along with the ironically named
"free" market, has arrogantly dumped El Niño Dios from
his crib and stops only where they pay him with credit cards.
Carols commercialized into advertising jingles fill the air,
singing of sleighs and reindeer and white Christmasses, with thier
cultural imperialism. But the subversive version of El Nacimiento
persists. I went to the RC Cathedral the other night with my
ecumenical friend Jorge Fiedler (he's Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, and
agnostic, whom I met at the congregation of the Metropolitan GLBT
that meets here on Sundays.) The concert was sponsored by the
German Embassy here, and was a crown of the season -- Nicaragua's chamber
music orchestra, Camerata Bach, played beautifully to a crowd that filled
the cathedral, and
singing groups, individual artists, and children's choirs, all
contributed to the rich program. They sang
Nicaragua's unofficial national hymn, "Nicaragua, Nicaragüita"
by Carlos Mejia Godoy, which has an echo of its revolutionary birth in
the line "Now that you are free, Nicaragua, I love you so much
more." But we didn't sing "Cristo ya nació en Palacagüina"
in which the lyrics have the boy Jesus sing "When I grow up I'm
going to be a Revolutionary." Sometimes deadenders change that
to "carpenter," which the Carlos Mejia wouldn't have sung
anyway. He wrote the Misa Campesina and lots of revolutionary
music, and still does. Remember the days when Mary's
Magnificat was proscribed by the fundamentalist dictator in Guatemala.
She is what they politely call in Nicaragua "hermosa" which
means both big and beautiful, for to be well fed in a poor country is
admirable.
"Cristo ya nacio en Palacagüina" , by Carlos Mejia Godoy (also
composer of the Misa Campesina) who was written during the Sandinista
revolution. Palacagüina is his own home town, a remote village in
the campo:
.
On Iguana Hill, a mountain in Segovia
a splendor strange shone bright
like daybreak at midnight!
cornfields caught fire,
Ironwoods shook like wire,
Light rained down on Moyogalpa
On Tepaneca, on Chichigalpa
(Chorus:)
Christ has now been born in Palacagüina
of old Joe Pavón and a girl named Maria
who goes very humbly to do her work,
to iron the clothes that will be worn
by the landlord's pretty woman.
All the people come to see;
they join a great throng
And the Indian Joaquin brings
braided cheese from Nagarote,
Instead of gold, incense and myrrh
they bring, far as I know,
candy kisses from Diriomo
and even yucca fritters from Guadalupe
Joseph the poor day laborer
suffers all day long
there with his rheumatism,
caning the seats for chairs,
his work of carpentry.
Mary dreams that her child
Like Papa will be a carpintero,
But the little rascal's thinking
Tomorrow I'll be a guerrillero!
Luke's story, like this carol, is a Gospel to and of the
poor. At St
Andrew's on the Alley, where I was vicar for thirty years in Chicago,
the
mass was preceded by a carol service, so there wasn't much time left
for
a homily, and not much need for one. Luke's gospel is itself the
homily, a mythic parable of Incarnation, and so we blessed a doll
and
kissed it and carried it in procession to a blessed crib and placed it
in
blessed straw and at the offertory offered it incense. Mary's child
was
probably born in history in Nazareth and this wondrous tale of
Bethlehem
and shepherds and stars, angel choirs and heavenly music, is to provide
us with sermon notes for high doctrine of the birth of revolution which
is not ideological but of the stuff of life itself. It
astonishes us
with the news that our expectations for God's visitation to our planet
are fulfilled always at the humblest place, as the Highest always comes
to be the Lowest, and lies down in our humanity with us to lift us to
heaven. St. Francis added to the staging with real Italians in
pageants,
real hay and real animals. So the liberative myth grows and acquires
momentum, among what we are pleased to call the Lower Animals that were
farming implements . The manger if there was one would more likely
have
been a hole in the floor, in a cave, and not a pink baby bassinette at
all. Our own forebears added the candles, the mistletoe and
evergreens,
the roast fowl and the cheery cup of grog to the scenario--a
Dickens of
a holiday. They wrote the myth that we are called to re-mythologize
in
our own lives.
In Bethlehem today, where I sayed with a Palestinian family of
Christians in 1998, not far from Manger Square, a silver star marks
the
spot where Jesus has been given an honorary birth place by centuries of
Christians, and it is the place where if he were looking for a
birthplace
in our century, he might indeed choose this
one. For it is in the
midst of strife, a Ground Zero of murderous imperial oppression
once
again. Oscar Wilde said that All Life imitates Art, and the
Church's
life today gives reality now to the Art of Luke's virtual
Bethlehem.
How does Luke preach "liberation"? His Jesus is a King in
"David's line,
born in David's city." This makes his gospel an
insurrectionary red
flag in itself, as it is in occupied Palestine today. It is like
imagining a Latin American liberator being born to a bag lady on the
White House lawn. It is like proclaiming a Nicaraguan politician to
be
once again "in the line of Agosto César Sandino" or a
president of
Mexico to be a descendant of Moctezuma, or a president of Venezuela
to
be in the line of Simon Bolivar. The announcement of a taxation
decree
by an imperial "savior" is confronted at once by an
announcement by
celestial armies singing The Internationale of a world revolution.
As if
the enslaving decrees of the International Monetary Fund are met by the
Third World's repudiating one starry night all of their debt to Gringo
bankers, and the United Nations today declares a new Era of economic
justice. Luke's King Jesus takes Augustus Caesar's
place as the Giver
of Peace, and so takes out the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate
that
imposes Pax Americana. We are given Pax Christi in our time.
Jesus is
in Luke's gospel proclaims a Soter, a Saviour--a political, not a
religious title. He is announced amidst the
marginalized, the
discounted, the irrelevant, the poor. The "personal
saviour" so
beloved of beetlebrowed fundamentalism is nonexistent in this gospel of
liberation. That notion was always used to keep helots off
the ladder,
workers in slavery, women in the kichen, gays in drag shows, and
democracy in chains.
The Saviour we hear of from Luke is the Liberator of the world and all
its peoples from their chains of power, privilege, and
the unequal distribution of the world's goods. This is the one who
shall
come again soon. An abience for his or her arrival might be
prepared for if the followers of Moses, of Jesus, and of the prophet
Muhammad would gather in the Palestinian homeland to plan a 'virtual
welcome' to the man of Nazareth and his blesséd Mother.
They'll be here any day now.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
grant73@turbonett.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
(1) (When I heard this sung a few years ago at the Batahola
choir's
Sunday mass, someone had changed "guerrillero" to
"misionero" -- Jesus
would be a missionary when he grew up, not a guerrilla! Last
night it
was back to "guerrillero" and the audience at Ruta Maya cheered
and
stomped. The song is on a CD collection, "Folklore de
Nicaragua",
25CDLA-905,an Orfeon disk 9944-10905-2.)
The Spanish text of the song follows. I must take the blame for
the
English translation.
En el cerro de la
iguana
montaña adentro de Segovia
se vio un resplandor extraño
como una aurora de medianoche
los maizales se prendieron
los quiebraplatas se estremecieron
Llovió luz por
Moyogalpa
Por Telpaneca, por Chichigalpa
Coro:
Cristo ya nació en
Palacagüina
de Chepe Pavón y una tal Maria
Ella va a planchar muy humildemente
la ropa que
goza
la mujer hermosa del terrateniente
En el cerro de la
iguna
montaña adentro de Segovia
se vio un resplandor extraño
como una aurora de medianoche
los maizales se prendieron
los quiebraplatas se estremecieron
Llovió luz por
Moyogalpa
Por Telpaneca, por Chichigalpa
Coro:
Cristo ya nació en Palacagüina
&c.
La gente para
mirarlo
se rejuntaron en un molote
y el indio Joaquin le trajo
quesillo en trenza de Nagarote
en vez de oro, incienso y
mirra
le regalaron, segun yo supe
cajetitas de
Diriomo
y hasta buñuelos de Guadalupe
Coro: Cristo ya nació en Palacagüina &c.
José el pobre
jornalero
se mecateya todo el dia lo
tiene con
reumatismo
,
el tequio de la
carpenteria
Maria sueña que el hijo
igual que el tata sea
carpintero
Pero el cipotillo piensa
Mañana quiero ser guerrillero!
Recommended Reading:
Richard A. Horsley, "The Liberation of Christmas: the Infancy
Narratives
in Social Context," Crossroads. 1969. Provocative detail of
this
approach for Christmas preaching.
http://www.pbase.com/danpolley/image/51378070