Sermon: Voices of Nicaragua

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Voices of Nicaragua

By Charles Rush

June 4, 2006

[ Audio (mp3, 4.4Mb) ]

ck when I was in seminary, Liberation theology was at it's height. Liberation theology was born out of Central and South America, also in South Africa to a lesser extent. It's premise was rather simple. These theologians, the vast majority of whom, were also pastors in poor areas, argued that God has a 'preferential option for the poor'. The gospel, which means, 'good news', is good news for all of us but it is especially good news for those that have been excluded and oppressed, who have never been invited to sit at the table.

This observation is simple because all you have to do is read the Gospel of Luke, which I seriously invite you to do, and it is clear that Jesus had a consistent outreach to people stigmatized because of illness like lepers, to people stigmatized because of prostitution, to women, to people that were simply poor and destitute. This is not a new observation. People like St. Francis have built whole religious orders around it in the past. It is more a reminder to us Ministers because the history of the Church is fraught with over attention to people of means that can actually help us erect these lovely churches and lead committees and make the community actually happen.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus actually sounds hostile towards rich people, but for the most part, Jesus is depicted as saying to all of us 'star bellied sneetches', "you have your reward". In other words, you are living the good life, and frankly, we are. So he would say, 'The Kingdom of God' is for those that were never invited to the party.

The parable of the wedding banquet has a curious and worrisome immediate application to our lived life just now. The Kingdom of God is like a guy that is very successful and throws a wedding for one of his kids, sends out invitations on fancy paper all engraved by hand, and doesn't get any rsvp from any of his friends. He shoots them e-mail to inquire as to what is up. The first guy says, "I can't come, we just bought a beach house in Southhampton and my wife wants us to grill out with our new neighbors that weekend." The second one says, "I'd love to come but my kids travel team for soccer has a big tournament that weekend in Maryland that I have to go to- hey, did I tell you I just got an Audi A6 convertible? I've figured out a back road trip down there but I'll be thinking of you when I'm zipping down route 516 at 105 miles an hour." The last guy says, "Man I'd love to come, but I've just gotten married again as you know, and Marla wants to just get away the two of us for that weekend. P.S. Man, she is wearing me out. Ha, ha, ha."

Everybody, it turns out, is so busy, with so many interesting and fulfilling opportunities, that they just don't have time for yet another party. I hear this all the time, "Chuck I'd love to come to church, but…" Occasionally, I have to explain to our guest speakers the sad reality that "even if Jesus were giving the talk today, we wouldn't have but 30 people that could make time to attend."

So, the Master, i.e. God, says to the servants, i.e. the clergy, go out to the ghetto's, the hood, the street, the barrio and find "the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame". Forget about the beautiful people, find the people in need. For the Kingdom of God is theirs.

Interestingly, Jesus doesn't prescribe a program at this point. We are not asked to become leftists like Che Guevera. We are not actually asked to solve the problems of poverty and degradation directly. Jesus does heal where he can but he doesn't heal everyone and we are not asked to heal everything either. We are just enjoined to go and be present. Something is going to happen in that interaction that will be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is almost as though, it is intrinsically spiritual. You will be changed. You will do something. But this is not a formula-type thing. Though we planner and organizers are not altogether comfortable with this answer, the Holy Spirit will make something happen. Just go do it.

I am actually grateful for Bridges, I'm grateful for our opportunities in Nicaragua because I know that it is keeping all of us spiritually humane. For over a decade now, I've been able to hand out Christmas presents at Battery Park in Manhattan with our Confirmation kids. For me, it makes the season. I can't imagine being anywhere else to be able to really take in the spiritual meaning of Christmas.

And I'm grateful that more than a decade ago, a group of feminist women in our congregation, reached out to feminist women in Nicaragua and began a partnership to help the women in Nicaragua to take control of their lives, begin to lead their families, and provide spiritual stability for the next generation. It turns out that if you help women develop their own income, they generate social power in the family, and with the equality they experience with their spouses, the dynamic of the family starts to heal. It turns out that women are far more likely to invest such money as they control in the education of their children, in the health of their children, in the spiritual grounding for their children- rather than, say, "hookers, drugs and beer"- which has been an integral part of the miasma of patriarchal poverty from the mists of time to the present.

Knowing all of this so well, I expect that one day in the not to far distant future, we will see something some foundation- not the "Bill and Linda Gates Foundation" but the Linda Gates foundation- that seeks to establish genuine equality for women throughout the world. We will start to see that this is a critical foundational component for the establishment of genuine democratic civil society. But I digress.

But I am grateful because I know that it is spiritually foundational for our children of privilege and, frankly, our children who have a sense of entitlement- and this is a problem in almost every family we know- to interact with their peers that are overwhelmed by poverty, lack of education, lack of hygiene, prostitution, drugs- really deprived of the simple joys of childhood. You can read about it, you can see the images on television, but spiritually you really need to smell it, you need to have that garbage stuck to the bottom of your sandal, you need to struggle to have a conversation with a mother completely wired out, talk to young girls about how they were forced into sex as children. It is important to get rid of the scrim of romantic distance, the control of being able to put the paper down or change the channel. We need to take this in and let it change us spiritually. This is our neighborhood. The whole thing is our neighborhood. Martin Luther King was absolutely right when he said that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'. However intricate and complex the inner-relation between Summit and the barrio of Managua, they are connected, and they are being experienced as more connected with each passing decade.

For some reason, I love walking through the barrio in Managua, seeing a kid with a shirt on that says Delbarton Lacrosse, Summit Football. We've been sending these container shipments down there for years somehow that image of a barefoot kid, sniffing glue in our preppie clothes personalizes this inner-connectedness for me in a disturbing way. At the end of the day, that is the point spiritually. It is not just a kid in a sports shirt, it is Luis, with a life and a very interesting story, even if it is tragic. He needs us, to be sure. And we need him to keep us spiritually humane, to keep us focused on what is important. We have to build our neighborhood in such a way that the soul mangling forces that scar Luis and give him a life, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, that is 'nasty, brutish, and short' begin to recede. Spiritually enlightened people have seen the beauty of malformed humanity blooming, indeed radiating, when they are watered with basic needs and love. This can be done. That is the simple, but profound presence that God has asked us to be to others. So be it. Amen.