A New We On Being Some Kind of Catholic A Sermon Godson Chapel, Duke Divinity School Nov 13, 2012

Transcription

1 A New We On Being Some Kind of Catholic A Sermon Godson Chapel, Duke Divinity School Nov 13, 2012 Readings: Ruth 1: 15-19; 3: 1-5; 4: It was a cold winter morning in January 2001 when I arrived here at Duke Divinity School. Willie Jennings, by then senior associate dean for academic affairs welcomed me and showed me my office. I did not know what I was doing, even less did my bishop, Cardinal Wamala, know when he allowed me to come for two years as a visiting professor. There were a number of things to figure out. One thing I could not get over still am not able to get over was the promiscuous range of denominations I encountered here at Duke Divinity School. In my mind, there were only two categories of Christians: Catholics and Protestants. But here I was now confronted not only with Methodists, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptists (in so many shapes and forms); denominational and non-denomination Evangelical, Free Church, AME, affiliated as well as non-affiliated as well as those still figuring out whether they were or not. If I was having trouble getting a sense of this denominational landscape, my students were having an even greater challenge figuring me out. They were not only straining to understand my thick African accent, they were not sure what to make of the theological eccentricities I represented. You see a number of my students simply assumed, for reasons that are still not clear to me, that I was Baptist. They could not understand the heavy emphasis I 1

2 was placing on the Eucharist. I remember in this one courses, it was on the Faces of Jesus in Africa and I was explaining how in Africa faith is not simply a matter of belief, and the soul and after-life, it is about cabbages, goats, millet, sickness and heath. I was also trying to explain that in many places in Africa Christians worship, not inside a sanctuary, a beautiful sanctuary like this, but under a tree. It is here, under a tree they listen to the word of God and celebrate the Eucharist. I must have carried on about the significance of celebrating the Eucharist, and how it is the Eucharist that makes the church. This chap in the front row, was looking at me, at what seemed to be a mixture of interest and pity, but the more I talked the more the expression turned into a big question mark on his face. Finally, when I paused he asked, Are you some kind of Catholic? Some kind of catholic! I replied that I was not simply some kind of catholic I was a Roman Catholic priest. I see, he said. Over the years, as I have thought about this student s question, I have come to realize this has been the most precious gift for me living and working here among non-catholics. How I have indeed become some kind of Catholic. And now as I look back on my life: a Ugandan, son of immigrant parents from Rwanda; an African who has been living here in the U.S for the last twelve years; a Catholic among non-catholics I realize a clear pattern namely that God has kept pushing me beyond my people, beyond my home to a place where I am no long sure who my people are, and where my home is. 2

3 But I have also come to believe that this is what God is determined to do with each one of us. Regardless of the particular details of our biography, God is committed to stretch, expand, in fact confuse our sense of who my people are, so as to make us, some kind of catholic, some kind of of Methodist, some kind of Lutheran, some kind of black, some kind of white person, some kind of American, some kind of African. For it is this some kind of identity that allows us to catch a glimpse of and live into the new future, into a new we - which God is determined to create in our midst, through unlikely friendships. Just as the case of Ruth and Noami. Naomi, an Israelite woman, during famine had gone with her family to live in the country of Moab. Her two sons marry Moabite women. When Naomi s husband and her two sons die, Naomi decides to return to her home town, Bethlehem. Her daughters in law wish to come with her, but Naomi tells them: I am an old woman; I do not have any more sons to give you. Go back each to your own mother s house, to your own people. Orpah, one of the daughters in law, returns to Moab, but Ruth, the other daughter in law, insists on coming with Naomi: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and you God my God. Where you die, I will die. There I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me and more as well if even death parts me from you. (Ruth 1: 16-17) 3

4 And so Noami returns to Bethlehem together with her daughter in law, Ruth. Here she helps Ruth not only find work, but a husband, Boaz, who happens to be Noami s relative. Ruth and Boaz conceive, and Ruth gives birth to a son, Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. But Obed is not simply a kind of Israelite he is a Moabite-Israelite. This is a hyphen that was never supposed to happen. For the Moabites and Israelites were bitter enemies. The Israelites not only hated, but despised the Moabites. They believed that the Moabites originated from the act of incest between Lot and his older daughter (Gen 19: 30-38). According to the Israelites the Moabites were cursed to the tenth generation which is to say, forever. Therefore according to Deuteronomy: No Ammonites or Moabites or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation Deut 23:3 The hostility was mutual. The Moabites not only refused to give Israel hospitable reception, their king Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel. Never mind that God turned the curse into a blessing (Numbers 23). What irony!!! For Obed is not only a kind of Israelite; an Israelite-Moabite, he is the father of Jesse, the father of David. David, Israel s hero, is the descendant of this union this Mestizo between Israel and her bitter enemy! The story of Ruth is meant to remind Israel of this, especially in those moments when Israel might wish to conveniently hate and therefore have nothing to do with the Moabites - and may invoke her sacred text to confirm that no Moabites or their 4

5 descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation, Deut 23: 3. But the fact that Jesus himself is descended from David, means that the Messiah is also a kind of Jew. This is the reason that Matthew, the most Jewish of all the gospels, written for a predominantly Jewish audience, makes sure his audience does not forget this. And so, at the very beginning of his proclamation of the Good News, Matthew includes Ruth (as one of the four women O.T women strange women) in the genealogy of Jesus. Ruth is the grandmother of David, the great great grandfather of Jesus. But Matthew s intention is also to make sure that we too do not forget. Not only Israel, but all of us, grafted into this story and who therefore become children and friends of God, are drawn into this drama of God who is determined to create a new future in which, as the letter of James reminds us, He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. (James 1:18). One thing that makes Ruth and Naomi s story such a beautiful story is not only its happy ending: Naomi holding Ruth s son, Obed, the grandfather of David; but also the intimacy of Noami and Ruth through which the two women supported each other, but also plotted and conspired and played Boaz, leading to the fruitful marriage of Ruth and Boaz. There also a number of euphemisms (see e.g. Chapter 3: Ruth and Boaz at the threshing floor, particularly all reference to Boaz s foot), which makes this a beautiful love story. 5

6 However, even most significant, what makes this a powerful story of friendship is the way it is built up around food and eating. It is famine that drives Noami and her husband into Moabite territory, looking for food. When Ruth and Noami return to Bethlehem, it happened to be harvest time. The first preoccupation of the women on their return is to find food. And so Ruth: let me go and glean ears of grain in the field of anyone who would let me. (2: 1). It happens to be the field of Boaz, who not only allows her to glean, but invites her to eat with him. She eats and has her fill and even asks for a doggie bag! At the end of the day, Ruth takes back home to Naomi not only the barley she had gleaned, but a doggie bag, with leftover from her lunch with Boaz. Their friendship is built around food and eating. Here I am reminded of the Rwandan proverb: Unless you hear the mouth eating, you cannot hear the mouth crying. Eating matters, and who we eat with matters a lot. For it is in learning to eat with strangers and those who are different from us that we become part of that God s new we. This is the lesson that Peter had to learn, first in a dream, and in reality when he entered the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion. It is only and through Peter (an Israelite) and Cornelius (a roman centurion) eating together that Peter came to discover that In truth, God has no favorites, (Acts 10:34). But of course this put Peter into a lot of trouble. And sometime he hesitated and wanted to turn back. Paul had to call him out. By eating with Cornelius, Peter had 6

7 betrayed his own people. Just like Noami and Ruth, Peter had become a kind of Jew - whose loyalty had become suspect. On my first pilgrimage to Burundi in 2008, we met a young man, Melance Ntahompagaze. Burundi is a very small country south of Rwanda. It is a very beautiful county; and also a predominantly Christian country. However, with the long history of ethnic hatred between Hutu and Tutsi, the blood of tribalism tends to run deeper than the waters of baptism. The social history of Burundi is a history of ethnic killings back and forth. In 1993 there was a massacre at Kibimbi, not too far from Giteega: a hutu mob rounded up Tutsi students and teachers from the Friends (Quaker school), along with some neighbors, and crammed them into a gas station, and set the gas station on fire. Over 120 people were killed. Melance together with a few others survived the smoke, and heat and crawled out of the smoldering ruins. At first Melance did not know what to do. Most of his friends were dead. With time he got together with a few other young people, some Hutu and some Tutsi, and they organized themselves into a peace-team committed to live as friends. They work together in fields, celebrate weddings and other events, and go into the villages and on hillsides, inviting both Hutu and Tutsi to a new life of friendship and fellowship. With time a number of other peace teams have been formed. And an organization, MiParec (ministry of reconciliation under the cross) supports their work. 7

8 To be a Burundian is to be either Hutu or Tutsi- which means to see each other as bitter enemies. And yet here is a Ntahompagaze. His name means, I have nowhere to stand - a kind of Burundian living true to his name It has not been easy, Melance told us, most of the times we are suspected by both communities. But the peace teams have also been a source of friendships. Working together in the fields growing crops, celebrating feastdays, weddings as well other opportunities of eating together keep Ntahompagaze and his friends going. We visited a newly-wed couple, Hutu and Tutsi- who could not stop talking about the celebration they had had at their wedding. If Ntahompagaze and his friends take every opportunity for Hutu and Tutsi to eat together, they are a sign, a kind of firstfruits of a new future in Burundi. If practices like growing crops and eating together as well worship (as a vision of reconciliation through the cross) builds up their friendship, it also forms Melance and his friends into patterns of patience and courage necessary for the demands that living a life of that kind of requires: On the same visit to Burundi in 2008, we went to Buta, a Catholic high school where we had the story of another kind of first fruits of a new creation; of a new future in Burundi. It happened in the fall of Shortly before dawn: militias group, headed by a fierce woman commander, attacked the seminary; they ordered the high school students to separate, Hutu on one side, and Tutsi on the other. Three times the order was given, but the students refused to separate. So, the commander ordered the rebels to open fire. The students fell, and others 8

9 tried to escape. In all, 40 students were killed. The rector heard the gunshots from his house, and crawled under his bed. One of the students who had been wounded ran to the rector s house, and called for the rector to open the door for him. When the rector opened the door, the boy dashed inside the small house, and gasping for breath told the rector: Father, we have won. They told us to separate and we refused. We have won. And he collapsed and died! We have won! What strange victory! As we heard the story told to us by Fr. Zacharie Bukuru, who was the rector then; as we stood in the cemetery with the neat rows of 40 graves, and looked at the martyrs of unity mural with the painting of the young seminarian martyrs holding palms in their hands; as we drove back to Bujumbura that evening, it was the words of the seminarian the words of the seminarian, we have won kept ringing in my ears. This is therefore what through my own journey I have come to see and understand. That God is determined not only to stretch, but to confuse the sense of who is my people so as to create, even here and now, a new future in our midst. And the way that God does this is first through his odd friendship with us: He came to dwell among us. God became human a kind of God!. This Odd God who became our friend, invites nay pushes us into strange places and friendships, friendships that are not supposed to be. Through these odd friendships, and only through them, can we get a glimpse of God s exciting new future, as well as a sense of what it means to say, in the midst of so much tribalism and divisions that wreck our world, to say together with those students in Burundi, We have won. 9

10 We have Won! Mural at Buta Seminary, Burundi. 10