Dávila CTA homily, November 8,

Transcription

1 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, Call to Action Eucharistic Celebration November 8, 2015 Homilist: MT Dávila Readings: 1 Kings 17: (Elijah and the widow during unfaithfulness of Israel) Psalm 146: 7, 8-9, 9-10 (God s reign is a reign of justice where cry of poor will be heard) Hebrews 9: (Jesus as last sacrifice) Mark 12: (The widow s offering on the temple) The Kin-dom of God is on the move! Perfect justice is not the static domain of an unbending and unchanging, divine and holy throne- Rather, it moves, and breathes, and has being and WE, we respond to its invitation to move along with it. The Kin-dom of God is on the move! It s loving embrace are the welcoming sands on the beaches of Greece and Turkey, after a treacherous crossing of a sea.

2 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, The cooperativas de mujeres in El Salvador, The #BlackLivesMatter signs, ripped up and violated again and again from houses of worship across the nation. The Kin-dom of God is on the move! It holds us up when we are beaten and broken When so-called custodians of grace and holiness preach exclusion clothed in tradition, using doctrine as a weapon. When radical welcome is ridiculed, labeled heresy, and outright forbidden. The Peace and Love, Faith and Justice of the Kin-dom is on the move. The Peace and Love, Faith and Justice of the Kin-dom is on the move. Peace, Love, Faith, Justice, Kin-dom is on the move I begin with these words, the Kin-dom of God is on the move because for the past year this has been a dominant theme in my mind, and when I was asked to join you and share some words on the readings for today and the close of this year s Call to Action conference, the image of the kin-dom on the move made its way into my heart and mind with a force I could not ignore. With the commemoration of the 50 th anniversary of the walk of people of faith from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the marches and protests of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the blocking of

3 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, traffic or construction in various cities and towns as people of all colors, ages, and religions stake their claim for justice, I can t help but notice that Kin-dom, is, in fact, on the move. And more so yet, this seems to be the overwhelming message in the Bible, and in today s readings specifically. Throughout Hebrew Scriptures God s covenant with the people is affirmed in motion, through Noah s voyage in the flood, to Abraham s journey to a new land, to the slaves in Egypt on pilgrimage to freedom. And in the passage from 1 Kings today Elijah is on the move when he comes across a poor widow deeply affected by the drought brought on to the land due to Israel s transgressions. While the people of Israel place their faith on the guarantees of a static and unmoving God/King, Elijah can t have anything to do with that. At the same time that he is run out of town and on the move, he discovers God s mercy and abundance in the margins. He has made the journey from the center to the margins, to the poor widow and her son, and in faith God provides enough flour and oil to last through the end of the drought. Elijah discovers that the power of the God of Israel no longer lies in the throne of the king, but in the margins and beyond, with the people outside the gates, outside the boundaries of the acceptable and proper. The story of the widow s mite has a particularly special place in my heart. You see, a few years ago well, I think a lot more years than I dare to admit I was taking a class on liberation theology with Gustavo Gutiérrez. The whole experience was key to my development as a theologian, and an ethicist, but most importantly as a

4 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, Christian. One of the lessons from that class had to do with this particular story, and it has everything to do with kin-dom on the move. This story in Mark comes within a bunch of other stories about Jesus and the temple. The temple is what many have called contested space in Mark s gospel. In current contemporary talk we could say that in Mark s gospel the relationship between Jesus and the temple is complicated. After all, Jesus has overturned the money changers tables, pointed out the abuses of the temple tax, and will in a few verses declare that he will tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days. So already we know that this particular passage of the offering in the treasury of the temple, that contrasts the offering of the rich against the two coins of the poor widow sits in a larger story that preaches a Kin-dom opposed to the temple culture and expectations and its religious authorities. But in this particular class Gutierrez noted something else. He mentioned how Jesus location is highlighted in the passage, he sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Gutiérrez noted that this was important because this was not a common space to occupy in the temple. So in order to get there Jesus, and his disciples, had to move, perhaps an uncomfortable and unexpected move, in order to have the vantage point of the position they took. I can imagine everyone else looking at them, asking themselves: What the heck are they doing?? From this vantage point Jesus was able to clearly see the difference between the rich people s offering and the widow s offering. And in the context of the gospel of Mark of the temple being this contested and complicated space, where Jesus rebelled against the sumptuous dress and the places of honor of the scribes,

5 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, where those who traded in access and exclusion based on taxes and the exchange of money are pretty much violently dispersed and expelled, in this context Jesus highlights something he is seeing perhaps for the first time, we don t know if he s seen this before, and precisely because he changes his place at the temple. He notices the widow s offering as a powerful sign of faith of one who gives her whole livelihood while others only give from their surplus. And then he praises her. One of the authors I read to study on this passage reminds us that while Jesus praises the widow and her offering, he does not do the same for the recipient of the offering. Like Elijah in our first story, Jesus in motion disturbs dominant and oppressive understandings of what the Kin-dom of God really means. Like Elijah in our first story, Jesus in motion gets to see something he wouldn t have otherwise seen: the faith of a widow in the power of God s mercy and love. Like Elijah in our first story, Jesus in motion is able to build a new understanding of faithfulness, one carefully informed by the faith of those at the margins, of these widows living at the edge of what is considered acceptable to God and acceptable to society. For both Elijah and Jesus being on the move brings an epistemological upheaval, it turns their world upside down, presenting a new way of understanding faithfulness, holiness, divine presence, welcome, hospitality, offering, even Eucharist. And so naturally I ask us, gathered here, where are we being called to be on the move? What is the blessed upheaval of kind-dom values that we are commanded to entertain in light of today s stories? Because we simply cannot stay put. That much

6 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, is clear. We cannot remain beholden to a temple against which Jesus specifically rebels. Because according to the readings being static and staying in place is not only not faithful, but it prevents us from encountering God where she is most present and active in the journey to the margins and beyond of what the official structures deem acceptable or included. Specifically for us here at the Call to Action Conference, where many have struggled at the margins of the temple, excluded from visions of the kin-dom, and fighting to bring in those cast of to spaces that lie even beyond the margins, hearing that we have to keep moving is just hard. Because the fight has already been oh so long. And yet I look at my daughters, my son, and understand Elijah, and the widow and her son, and Jesus, and the widow in the temple, and like Gustavo Gutiérrez suggested, I understand that I have to MOVE, to shift my location, become incarnate in a different place in order to continue creating a more inclusive, just, loving, and holy vision of the kin-dom. I look at you and know that one more step, one shift in our location, will help us move toward the church that rebels against the temple, and is able to see and honor the widow s offering, to honor everyone s gifts at the altar. The kin-dom of God is on the move. We too need to move. From the desensitized morass of being overwhelmed by the violence of racial injustice, to moving right up the flagpole with Bree Newsome to take down a confederate flag. We need to move away from the idolatry that clings to every bishop s word as if only they were the arbiters of what right offering looks like, to the deserts and the sea shores where

7 Dávila CTA homily, November 8, refugees and migrants are moving and arriving so that we can make our own right offering of welcome and hospitality. We need to move from communities too identified with U.S. religious battles that are altogether petty and downright unchristian, to the real solidarity that comes from moving beyond the margins, to understand what it means to be faithful from the perspective of our partner communities in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, Korea, India, and all over the world. In the confidence of the incarnation, of that holy migration that brought the Creator to be one with the creature, God on the move to become one of us, we march together. And together on the move we might find what faithfulness and right offering lies at the margins, casting our lot with the widows and the excluded. May this be so. Amen.