| Between Slavery and Freedom, scarcity and uncertainty |
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| escrito por Fr. Juan Quevedo-Bosch | |||||||
| Saturday, 21 de March de 2009 | |||||||
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NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Fourth Sunday in Lent Year B RCL Numbers 21:4-9 Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21 for the texts click here  I was trying to get to a party on Friday night, in the Bronx, the son of a dear friend and parishioner is getting married and they were having a dinner in his honor. On more mundane note, I also needed to go to the bathroom. They were not listed on the intercom, so I tried the phone no answer, finally somebody came and opened the buildings’s door so I rushed to the second floor and banged on their door and call them by phone, and banged the door, more phone tries, I could hear the phone ringing but no one answered, finally I decided it was time to go home, so I did. Not before a relief visit to my own car’s tire sheltered by the dark of the night. One good thing came of the fiasco, namely the gist for this sermon today, namely it is tough to be in the threshold, there is no place more difficult and challenging that the liminar state, the in-between, the very small patch of the other reality, beyond where we stand, sometimes before getting in, arriving, being there. My sermon is going to run on both passages of Numbers and John against the best advice of my professor of homiletics at seminary. He said that pfreaching from two passages is like standing on two wild horses, one foot each. Immigrants are by definition people who live in between, perpetually neither here or there, I myself as your pastor and immigrant I feel sometimes that I can see you, I can hear you, but I do not know you really, I mean from within but instead I know from without. That all in itself has extraordinary value, but I am always anxious to be able to relate to you, not as outsider. Not only immigrants experience liminar states, we all at one time or another have to transit through change and all changes required borders that need to be crossed, doors that need to be banged, adjustments that need to be made. In fact all of our lives we are crossing one border or another, when we feel settled, we think we have arrived, there it comes change. Children learn to be adolescents, and then learn to be adults, and then learn the fine art of aging and then we finally get to the final threshold and meet our Maker. At the same time, we fall in love, we come out of many closets, we get a job and learn the culture of a new work place, we get fired, we may or may not develop an inner life, we may and/or may not cross Jordan and come and/or leave Jesus, we may go through a spiritual desert or may live a life of lush and deep piety, we may get sick and then healed and then hospitalized and then release from hospital, for everywhere we go and every stage of our own selves we experienced, will be always surrounded by those times when we adjust, learn and grow. Times of death but also times of resurrection. The people of Israel are now in the desert in the Sinai peninsula, probably near the southwest of the Dead Sea going though a liminar or threshold stage of their own. During their journey from Egypt to Palestine, the Bible tells us of several rebellions. In the Old Testament reading the people rebel against Moses and God. The people are "impatient" because Moses has refused to engage Edom in battle. They disparage the food that God has given them for their daily sustenance by referring to manna as "this miserable food" (v. 5). They are in between the past of slavery and the future of abundance. For the transition God’s provides them just with what was needed and without variety. No gourmet, but pizza. God sends them as punishment Saraph nachash -fiery serpents- seraphim, the people do repent, and ask Moses to intercede for them, God replies that he will heal through a symbol, a bronze snake on a pole. Then the serpent becomes a multi-semic or dual signifier, equally pointing both to death and life. A word on the serpents here, James Charlesworth, professor at Princeton Seminary tells us in his book THE GOOD AND EVIL SERPENT that the image of the serpent, beyond its negative meaning in popculture, had both positive and negative meanings. Charlesworth reveals the widespread use of serpent imagery to symbolize wisdom, rejuvenation, and eternal life. In ancient Egypt, for instance, the image of an upright hooded cobra was commonly employed as a protective icon. The familiar caduceus of Western medicine originated with the entwined serpents carved on the staff of the legendary Greek healer Aesculapius, and Moses fashioned a serpent of brass on a pole to ward off snakes in the wilderness. It is also interesting to note that in this rebellion as in the rebellion of the golden calf, there is a harping back to the Egypt’s symbolic world that was certainly well known to the Jews. On the other hand, John’s passage is the tail end of the dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus has told him that he needs to be born again, and Nicodemus wonder what that can be. Jesus mocking Nicodemus, a rabbi himself, scolds him for not knowing and paints ignorance as the wilful refusal to see the truth, not as the absence of information. Jesus says that he, like in Moses’s time must be lifted up, and the act of His being lifted up will similarly bring about salvation, but as the doble sign of the serpent, both of healing and of judgement, Jesus’s salvation like Moses’s staff will be available to all who believe in Him and for those who refuse, will be already condemned. To clarify his point, Rabbi Jesus speaking to Rabbi Nicodemus distances himself from a servile interpretation of the sign of the serpent, and specifies that different to the Saraph Nachash -the flying burning serpents- of the Numbers’s story, he does not bring judgement or death, but just salvation. Both the people of Israel and Nicodemus are in the uncomfortable place of the in-between, at the door, the people of Israel at the door of the Promised Land, Nicodemus at the door of a new revelation of the love of God bringing healing, salvation to all the world. The reality of border crossings is far more that illegal Mexicans arriving to this New Canaan of sorts, in fact none of us have really arrived, we all live crisscrossed by borders we traverse either regularly or at some point of our lives. That in our relationship with God we are all immigrants in this land of grace and that the liminal nature of the Kingdom, core message of Jesus, is here and not-yet, and therefore by definition we are all at the door, outsiders to the wedding Banquet, banging at the door of mercy this Lent of ours, with greater urgency than me last Friday night. We know not to worry, because even as guests in the House of The Lord, we know he loves the world, and we are part of that world, therefore he love us all. Karl Barth, a world renowned theologian, was also a reformed pastor and had his own church, he was assisting an elderly member who was very ill and concerned about death, and she said to him Pastor Barth, would I see in heaven my friends and family and he assured her that will be the case, but then he paused for a moment and he said, but you will see your enemies as well. We are all equally unworthy recipients of grace, wether friend or foe. Every night on the news, we hear horrifying reports from Iraq. In a recent Breakpoint Commentary, Charles Colson shared this moving story about a U.S. triage facility doing its best to save the lives of two Iraqi insurgents: The U.S. medical team moved heaven and earth to save their lives. One insurgent, however, was not going to survive unless he got 30 pints of blood… The call went out for volunteer donors; minutes later, dozens of GIs had lined up. At the head of the line was a battle-hardened soldier named Brian Suam. Asked if it mattered that his blood was going to an insurgent, he smiled and said no—"A human life is a human life." On a frozen morning here in New York, a few years back, I was supposed to see a local doctor, all night snowed, and then ice and then freezing rain and then temperatures dropped. All sidewalks covered with a dangerous sheet of ice. I took my car, though it was not too far away from home and as got off the car I saw a note on the doctor’s office door. All appointments have been cancelled due to the inclement weather. As on my way to my car, a very frail, elderly lady arrives slowly taking very careful steps on the skating quality ice covering the sidewalk and I approached and I told her about the appointment cancellation notice. She was very disappointed but there was nothing to be done and she slowly and with unsteady small steps turned around to head to the subway. I ask her where she lived and she said Jackson Heights and told her I will take her home. Her face lit up and agreed to ride with me in the car. I found that she was Colombian and they have the habit of saying instead of Gracias -Thank you- they say -Mi Dios le pague- May my God repay you- . We struck a conversation and chatted our way to her home, I got off the car to help her to the door of her building as she was repeating -Mi Dios le pague- May my God repay you. I was feeling so good about myself for her show fo gratitude, as I left her safely at her door, she repeated once more “May my God repay you” and suddenly I felt choked and very humbled and I went back to her and touching her arm ever so gently I said -He owes me nothing, I am in his debt for all eternity- I could have added - I saw his cross once and that was enough to heal he, to restore me, to return me to the land of the living, He asked nothing in return and I am ever so grateful, because no matter what comes my way, I know that I will never be alone.
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