rain and the rhinoceros

If you are flabbergasted by the whole media debacle over Obama and his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I highly recommend perusing D.W. Horstkoetter’s posts on the issue.

On Holy Thursday the church remembers the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples and so also the mystery of the Eucharist.
Because I’m immersed in the work of Herbert McCabe right now this post primarily consists of my reflections on a Holy Thursday sermon he once delivered that was published in God Matters. For McCabe, the Eucharist and indeed everything that the church points to is about the “mystery of unity,” that is, the being together of people. The church proclaims that all our efforts toward unity culminate in God. “The ultimate unity of people is only to be found in God, and the real God is only to be found in unity between people” (God Matters, 78). Needless to say, humanity has not reached a point of unity. Today, we solemnly remember our utter estrangement and alienation from one another. As a result of our persistent disunity our concepts of God constantly slip into idolatry. As McCabe points out, “God becomes for us the God of our class, our nation, our race or time, the tutelary deity, perhaps, of the ‘free world’” (78). As we recall the launching of an illegal war in Iraq five years ago we still hear the sound of “God is on our side.” Lord Jesus forgive us, the church, for our complicity in this idolatry and our collusion with nationalist politics. To recognize the disunity of humanity and our own complicity in this is to recognize the pervasiveness of sin.

In the church’s celebration of the Eucharist the Last Supper is made present, but we are also flung into the future. The future of the world is nothing less than participation in the mystery of triune God. It is the unity, the communion that we long for; it is being-together in truthfulness and freedom. At the moment, as McCabe notes, “We can see humankind itself as one only in mystery, in the gesture towards the reality that is to come. We cannot see love except in hints and guesses of what is to come” (79). Holy Thursday is the celebration of being together as people, as humans, and so we also celebrate the unity that is to come. Yet, Holy Thursday like the sacraments only exist because of sin, which is to say that these things are temporary and incomplete. Sin is “the depth within our quarrels and disunity and dislikes. Sin is the seriousness within human injustice, where it becomes a matter of what God we serve.

Our only hope for unity is in God and our approach toward this unity is, as McCabe points out, to be in solidarity with “the poor and the exploited against their oppressors,” for “the only God we know is the God of the poor, the God who takes sides in the struggle, and that any God of consensus who is supposed to belong to both sides is an illusion and a dangerous one” (79). In McCabe’s view, though God takes sides we do not. And so we can never say that “God is on our side,” but this is not because God is neutral but because we are compromised. Because God is on the side of the poor, so the church if it is to be a sign of the kingdom must be the church of the poor. Despite the optimism of modernity “there is no real unity to the world, the only authentic unity is in the struggle, and it is because this is our real unity here and now that we can only express the Kingdom sacramentally” (79).

What we experience in the United States is not true peace or unity primarily because it is born out of fear and based on violence. The unity that we have as citizens of the U.S. is a false unity because it is not built on love. Indeed, this false unity is nothing but “concealed hatred, a hypocritical pretense of fellowship” (80). The entire structure of the United States and the false unity that we have through global capitalism is built on antagonism and violence. However important the dismantling of structural violence is it will not finally bring about unity. If we believe this, according to McCabe, we have not come to recognize the depth of human sin. The human race is in need of a greater transformation, a more radical revolution than the overthrow of systems of injustice: we are in need of forgiveness.

When the local church gathers together on Holy Thursday, the whole church is present, just as the whole Christ is made present in the Eucharist. This gathering is never private. Whenever the church gathers it gathers as a public in its own right. There is no such thing as a private mass. “Those who are actually enacting the liturgical sign of eating the Body of Christ and drinking his Blood are doing so not for their own private sakes, but for the whole community, just as actors are not acting just for their own private satisfaction but for the whole audience as well” (83).

The Eucharist is thus a sign of the mystery of unity and “Christ is present precisely as the sign of our unity and not in any other way” (84). The Eucharist as a meal is a sign of community and hospitality. Each and every human being is invited to the table to share in the food that is a sign of our unity in God. And so we give thanks for the gift of life and nourishment, for God’s sustaining love and his Word made flesh in whom we were made and to whom we are destined to share in life together.

There is an “atheism” that is closer at hand and more dangerous to our church. It is the atheism of capitalism, in which material possessions are set up as idols and take God’s place. Here, in a capitalism that idolizes money and “human goods”, is a danger for us as serious as the other, and perhaps more than the other, which gets the blame for all evils. Which is more serious: to deny God out of a false idea of human liberation, or to deny him out of selfishness raised to the level of idolatry? Who are the greater hypocrites, those who believe in this world to the point of denying openly what is transcendent, or those who use what is transcendent and religious as a tool and justification for their idolatry of the earth? 

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Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, especially those of you who hate me, you who have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice - be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way to ruin.

I address those who have caused so many injustices and acts of violence, those who have brought tears to so many homes, those who have stained themselves with the blood of so many murders, those who have hands soiled with tortures, those who have calloused their consciences, who are unmoved to see under their boots a person abased, suffering, perhaps ready to die. To all them I say: no matter your crimes. They are ugly and horrible, and you have abased the highest dignity of a human person, but God calls you and forgives you. And here perhaps arises the aversion of those who feel they are laborers from the first hour. How can I be in heaven with those criminals? Brothers and sisters, in heaven there are no criminals. The greatest criminal, once he has repented of his sins, is now a child of God.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

The attempt to relate the message of liberation theology to the middle-class church of the United States is replete with difficulties. The primary reason for this is that liberation theology is most fundamentally the cry of the poor and the oppressed, and the United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world. Indeed, the United States has been the target of much criticism from the mouths of liberation theologians, not least for its unwavering support of oppressive regimes in Latin America, the birthplace of modern day liberation theology. For this reason, the church in the United States has not been free from the criticisms launched by liberation theology either. From the perspective of liberation theologians, the middle and upper classes of the United States have been complicit in the policies of oppression that have plagued Latin America and much of the developing world. In the eyes of liberationists, the church in the United States does not have a good record of resisting such policies. This paper will explore the challenge that liberation theology poses to the church in the United States and First World Christians in general.

To be fair, there is a significant, albeit small, portion of the middle-class church in the United States that supports efforts of liberation in Latin America and other impoverished parts of the world. Although there is still much work yet to be done by way of communicating the message of liberation theology to the First World, a concerted effort has been made to relay the present plight of much of the world’s population. For instance, on a number of occasions John Paul II addressed the need for Christians living in the First World to stand in solidarity with poor. As a result of the growing recognition of the phenomenon of globalization, recent Catholic social thought has also emphasized the need for solidarity and continues to advocate “the preferential option for the poor.” Indeed, the Catholic social tradition is filled with incisive social critiques. In many ways, Rerum novarum prefigured and set the stage for liberation theology. Eighty years later with the liberationists in mind Pope Paul VI addressed the “flagrant inequalities that exist in the economic, cultural, and political development of nations” and called for all Christians to be actively involved in social reform (Brady 2).

The official teaching of the Catholic church has also been quite critical of certain elements of liberation theology, particularly its dependence on Marxism. Drawing from Marx’s critique of capitalism, many liberationists have advocated the abolition of private property, which runs against much of the tradition of Catholic social thought. The Vatican has also been critical of support for violent modes of resistance, which has not always been absent from liberation theology. As Brady points out, “A key point for critics of Liberation Theology was its ambiguity on the question of violence and revolution” (Brady 15). In my estimation, there is no doubt that the magisterium’s sharp criticism of some elements of liberation theology has had the unfortunate effect of stifling communication of the core challenge that liberation theology poses to First World Christians. Although the magisterium’s criticisms are often theologically justified, they nonetheless tend to provide First World Christians with a convenient way out of any feeling of moral culpability.

In response to the accusation that liberation theology supports violence, Dom Helder Camara argues that people living in poverty suffer from systemic violence. He writes, “It is common knowledge that poverty kills just as surely as the most bloody war. . . Look closely at the injustices in the underdeveloped countries, in the relations between the developed world and the underdeveloped world. You will find that everywhere the injustices are a form of violence. One can and must say that they are everywhere the basic violence No. 1″(Brady 16). Camara’s argument has the effect of turning the question of violence onto the First World Christians. He laments, “The young are losing confidence in the churches, which affirm beautiful principles, great texts, remarkable conclusions, but without ever deciding, at least so far, to translate them into real life” (Brady 16). Camara refers to the resistance of “violence No. 1″ as “violence No. 2.” He writes, “Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt” (Brady 16). The common response of governments, in the name of public order and national security, is to respond with violent repression, “violence No. 3.” Camara concludes, “If violence is met by violence, the world will fall into a spiral of violence; the only true answer to violence is to have the courage to face the injustices that constitute violence No. 1″ (Brady 17).

Camara’s conclusion poses a challenge to First World Christians and especially middle-class Christians living in the United States. In response to liberation theology and the teachings of the Catholic social tradition, many First World Christians seek to live in solidarity with the poor in Latin America and around the world. Indeed, when First World Christians read stories from the liberationists about the plight of the Third World, we are moved and feel a sense of compassion. When we read the accounts of Archbishop Oscar Romero taking a stand against injustice, we admire his courage and there is a real sense in which we would like to stand with him. All of this is good, however, what we sometimes forget is that we are the oppressors! We, by virtue of being First World Christians play a part in the spiral of violence. The challenge of Camara’s argument to First World Christians is that we are violence No. 1.

For Christians in the United States it is crucial to remember that the neo-liberal economic models imposed on Latin America, the torture techniques of the counterinsurgency, and many of the weapons used to commit atrocities in the region, come from the United States. It would be disingenuous for us therefore to simply state that we are in solidarity with Latin Americans, without recognizing the part we play in the grave injustices. In his letter Paul condemns the Corinthians for worshipping idols (10:14-21) and eating while others go hungry (11:21-22), for “there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (10:17). William Cavanaugh reflects on what this might mean for First World Christians. He writes, “Discerning the body must mean being able to identify truthfully where the body is not whole, where divisions exist.” When the church discerns the body the divisions that exist are made clear. Fortunately, as Cavanaugh points out, “our eucharistic communion gives us hope that this is not the final word. Besides shining a light on the divisions that exist, discerning the body includes an exercise in dissolving those divisions, blurring the lines between ‘them’ and ‘us.’” The plight of the Latin Americans of which the liberationists speak also truly becomes the plight of the First World Christians. As Cavanaugh states, “Christ invites us to experience that suffering as our suffering, suffering that takes place in our very body. What a difference that would make in the tolerance we have for the outrages done in our name.”

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fullyexpresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one-day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.Amen.

Attributed to Archbishop Romero, written by Bishop Kenneth Untener