LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

With that being said, I’d like to once again begin with a land acknowledgment to honor the Native people that existed here before us. This land we dwell upon today (Grace Lutheran Church in downtown Phoenix) is the ancestral land of the Tohono O’odham (Thaw-naw-Awe-Thumb) Nation. We acknowledge their historical roots in this place and the many generations who were stewards of this land before it was stolen from them.

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WILL YOU JOIN GOD’S WORK OF LIBERATION?

The President of the United States was Jimmy Carter just happened to celebrate his 98th birthday this weekend.

The UK Prime Minister was...Margaret Thatcher

Pope St John Paul II was leading the Catholic Church.

People in the United States were listening to the hit song…Crazy Little (I thought Michael Buble wrote that one! - haha!)

Coal Miner's Daughter was one of the most viewed movies.

Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin was one of the most-read books.

If you liked video games in 1980 you were probably playing Space Zap or Akala-beth: World of Doom.

None of which I know anything about…but…

But more than who was president, prime minister, or the pope, or best-selling books, movies, and video games…So much more happened on that day…

Imagine with me that we are flying over to El Salvador on February 24, 1980.

EL SALVADOR

[This] small, Central American country is bordered by Honduras, Guatemala and the Pacific Ocean. [And over time] has been plagued by violence and poverty due to over-population and class struggles. The conflict between the rich and the poor of the country has existed for more than a century.

Coffee is the major cash crop bringing in 95% of the country's income. But the wealth is confined within only 2% of the population. Tensions between the classes [the poor and the rich, are growing], which has and continues to lead peasants and indigenous people to turn against the government.

The government of El Salvador doesn’t just sit by and watch but instead supports military death squads and kills anyone who even looks Indian or may support the uprising leaving more than 30,000 people dead.

These events have lead to a Civil War in El Salvador.

Civilians are on high alert because the miliarty is targetting anyone they suspect supports social and economic reform.

Including unionists, clergy, independent farmers and university officials.

THIS is the state of El Salvador on February 24, 1980.

OSCAR ROMERO

And it is on this day that Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero said these words to the church:

“Moses commanded the citizens of Israel to take to the temple the

first fruits of the harvest of their fields and to offer them to God

with the following prayer, which contains Israel’s creed:

Then in the presence of the Lord your God you will say: “My father

was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt and

settled there with a few persons. Then they grew into a great,

strong, and numerous race. The Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, and imposed a harsh slavery on us. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors. The Lord heard our voice

and looked on our oppression.”

And it goes on to describe how [God] took them out of Egypt and

through the desert to give them their own country, a promised

land.

It is a beautiful creed (Romero says). The Israelites did not have a [fragile] faith, like many Christians who think that speaking of things like this gets the church involved in politics. Israel’s faith was the faith of its political life. Faith and political life were turned into a single act of love for the Lord. Their political life breathed God’s graces and promises…

And the God of all peoples, the God of El Salvador as well, must be such a God, one that illumines political life also. He is the one who gives us our farmlands, and he is the one who wants land reform. He is the one who wants a more just distribution of the wealth that El Salvador produces. It is not right that some fill up their coffers and the people are left without the gifts of God that he has given for the people…

All of our peoples should read the Bible and learn from it the

relationship of faith and politics. The Bible is the text from

to learn how to live that wonderful relationship between faith and political life. When the Holy Spirit brings Israel’s times to their fullness and Christ is born through the Holy Spirit, this Christ begins to form a new people. We Christians [Jesus followers] are that people, and we as a people that arises are the work of the Holy Spirit…

That does not mean that we are going to leave the people’s

liberation for the other side of death. The risen Christ belongs now to present history [let me say that again], and he is the source of human liberty and dignity. That is why we prepare for Easter by observing Lent, so that from our Salvadoran condition, living our Salvadoran Lent, we Salvadorans may enjoy the new life of the risen Christ, striving for a more just and fraternal country. There we can live more intensely the life of God that Christ has brought us and that he gives us through his paschal mystery.

[Romero concludes] Christ has risen here in El Salvador for us, so that with the power of the Spirit we can pursue our own nature, our own history, our own freedom, our own dignity as the Salvadoran people.

HUMAN DIGNITY FOR ALL

What I love most about this homily from Oscar Romero is that he has seamlessly merged what it means for Christ to rise again in our present-day reality. Dignity and justice for all are not separate from what Christ desires for us, in fact, they are exactly why Christ came.

I speak of a story from 1980 but it also speaks to the reality of 2022.

As disciples of Jesus…what is our responsibility to our friends without homes? What is our communal responsibility to single moms with no support? What is our communal responsibility to immigrants and refugees fleeing violence from their countries? What is our communal responsibility when it comes to…

The Gender Pay Gap
Systemic Discrimination
Elders / Ageism
Homophobia
Racism and Xenophobia
Gerrymandering
Climate Change
Education
Child and Forced Marriage
Religious Discrimination
Poverty
Unequal Service Delivery
Slavery and Human Trafficking
Stereotyping
Forced Child Labor
Disability Discrimination
Health Access
Prisoners
Colonization

What is our responsibility as Jesus followers?

What did He do? How did He treat people? How did Jesus care for those sitting under the weight of oppression?

Well, we can look to the Exodus story and see Jesus there. When God delivered the Children of Israel from slavery under the Egyptian empire, it foreshadowed what God was going to do through Jesus in the time to come.

IN ISAIAH 43

Isaiah speaks of future salvation in the imagery of a new exodus embodied in our savior Jesus whose arms of love are so expansive all are included.

Verses 14-21 reads as follows… (NLT)

The Lord’s Promise of Victory

14 This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “For your sakes I will send an army against Babylon, forcing the Babylonians[b] to flee in those ships they are so proud of. 15 I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator and King. 16 I am the Lord, who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea. 17 I called forth the mighty army of Egypt with all its chariots and horses. I drew them beneath the waves, and they drowned, their lives snuffed out like a smoldering candlewick.

18 “But forget all that— it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. 19 For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. 20 The wild animals in the fields will thank me, the jackals and owls, too, for giving them water in the desert. Yes, I will make rivers in the dry wasteland so my chosen people can be refreshed.

21 I have made Israel for myself, and they will someday honor me before the whole world.

God’s deliverance was the fulfillment of political hope for the children of Israel…

Fred Fisher says it this way, it was God who saw the afflictions of his people and heard their cry, who moved to deliver his people, who, by his plagues, overcame the objections of Pharaoh and showed the powerlessness of the gods of Egypt. It was God who claimed his people for his own, who guided them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, who opened the Red Sea so the people could march across on dry ground…

SYSTEMS COME DOWN

Every plague that God sent to the Egyptians made a mockery of and overthrew the gods the Empire used to worship, leading them to oppress the children of Israel.

They worshiped the Nile River…God turned the Nile into blood.
They worshipped the god of fertility with the head of a frog…God brought so many frogs they couldn’t eat, sleep, walk, think, or poop.
They worshipped the dust of the earth... and God turned the dust into lice – tiny, stinging, blood-sucking gnats.
They worshipped the fly (a goddess of protection)...and God had flies come in swarms.
They worshipped the bull god…and God had their livestock die.
They worshipped the goddess of epidemics…God sent boils upon their bodies.
They worshipped the sky and atmosphere…and God sent down hail and fire from above.
They worshipped their crops and the god who protected their crops, and God sent locusts to eat them all up.
They worshipped the sun – the most worshipped god in Egypt and God covered the sun and sent darkness.
They worshipped the goddess of birth and reproduction and God sent death of the first born – This act put an end to the next generation of people that oppress. This divine act was only escapable through the blood of a lamb on a door post symbolizing Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Jesus was the fulfillment of political hope for those under the oppression of the Roman Empire…and Jesus IS STILL the fulfillment of our political hope today.

Every pillar that Egyptian oppressive power was standing on came tumbling down!!!

My question for you tonight is…

Will you join God in the continuation of tearing down systems of power that oppress?

I'll use the words of Obery M. Hendricks Jr. to say that…God wants to use His liberating love to overthrow the things that the empire of these here United State of America uses to worship and oppress people made in the image of God.

America worships the white cisgender male with supreme views on homosexuality and marriage equality. Jesus reminds us, “A New commandment I give you. Love one another.”

America worships her guns, an unholy alliance with the NRA, the U.S. Constitution’s right to bear arms. But God has always said, “Thou shall not murder. Thou shall not kill.”

America worships Christian Nationalism and the demonization of immigrants and Muslims – Jesus exemplified extreme hospitality and said, “I have other sheep not in this fold.”

America worships the human rights and dignity of the unborn but negates how to behave with human decency to those living and breathing right in front of us. Jesus reminds us, “You shall not add to the command I give to you. Love one another.”

America worships big business, monitarial gain, even at the expense of the working class, but Jesus said “The Workman is worthy of his keep.” Meaning those who work are entitled to all that is necessary to live.

God is and has always been in the business of Liberation.

God is and has always been in the business of tearing down systems of Injustice.

If you continue on in the story…God delivers the children of Israel and then gives the 10 Commandments for the personal well-being of His people. Because God knew that if oppressive people simply become free without first unlearning oppression, they themselves will in turn oppress others.

Jesus embodies for us what it means to unlearn oppression and live by a way of love that liberates.

Can you see what God is doing here and now?

In the midst of turmoil and oppression…can you see liberation?

In the midst of racial hostility…can you see reparations and land restoration to Native peoples?

In the midst of climate change…can you see climate justice?

In the midst of our friends experiencing homelessness…can you see them having food and shelter?

Can you see God’s redemptive power, at work, in us…through us?

Can you see it? Can you practice the ways of Jesus, join Him in His mission, and be an embodiment of His Kingdom of love and flourishing here on earth?

NOVEMBER 8TH

The general election on November 8th is our opportunity to show up for each other, our neighbors, our community, and our city. Practicing the ways of Jesus is not always mystical and spiritual…but concrete and practical.

Our friends at Cair Arizona and Corazon are hosting a Town Hall Meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 12th to provide Voter Education to the public with an opportunity to meet candidates and ask questions on issues you care about.

As my Mom would say, “Get your black butt to the polls. Get your black butt to the town hall meeting. Bring 5 people with you when you go.”

This is our opportunity. This is our time to act. Who’s to say that the political conditions of El Salvador in 1980 will not one day be the political conditions of Phoenix Arizona?

How we choose to show up for this next election matters because voting is one of the greatest acts of non-violent love we can engage in.

CONCLUSION

February 24th, 1980 was exactly one month before Oscar Romero was assassinated. What he chose to say in his final month of life was that The risen Christ belongs now to present history, and he is the source of human liberty and dignity.

As the music comes up, I’ll end our time together with words from Wilda C. Gafney:

“If we are to be free, truly free and not the blasphemous freedom the Episcopal Church offered the enslaved that was only on the other side of the grave, but if we are to be free here and now, then we can be neither enslaved nor enslaver. We cannot continue to maintenance the structures of enslavement that dehumanize our mothers and brothers, sisters and siblings, fathers and friends, queerkin and transkin.

In order to be free we have to tell the truth about the things we’ve been conditioned, not only not to speak about, but also not to examine too closely: Where does our money come from, on whose blood and bones were our buildings built, whose children were sold to provide the investments into the oldest companies in our portfolios? How do we get free of that blood on our hands? It won’t be without cost or pain. We have to get free of Church as we know it. We cannot hang on to all of our institutions and traditions and change the systems that fundamentally enslave with and through them.”

PRAYER PRACTICE

Let’s pray. You can close your eyes if you feel comfortable.

Just imagine yourself with God at your favorite place on earth. God’s sitting with you telling you all about the things He wants to do on earth. He talks to you about history. He talks to you about the present. He talks to you about the future.

Then God asks you a question…He asks you to join in and play a part in His story. What do you say back to Him? Can you see yourself being a part of that story? Can you see yourself participating with God in the story he is trying to tell here and now?

As you imagine this, just ask God what do you want me to know and what do you want me to do?

BENEDICTION

Until we see you again may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Will You Join God's Work of Liberation? | @kaleophx

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October 2, 2022

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT