Jeremiah 1:4-10: “Before you were born, I knew you and consecrated you.”

Gospel: John 8:21-38

verse 31: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Verse 36: “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Prayer:

During my sabbatical this past spring, I had the privilege of traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I joined the faculty of the “Seminario Evangelico de BA” as a guest faculty. I was a guest from the “global north.” I decided to go to Argentina because I wanted to hear the voices of the many folks I had only read about, the theologians and ethicists and pastors and laity from the global south. It was a truly wonderful and theologically enriching two months, where I might add I also learned to dance the tango, or at least to stumble through it. I assure you, I was no Arthur Murray graduate on the dance floor, but it was fun to get out there and try the dance that was born on the docks of the famous River Plate.

Well, it just so happens that soon after my arrival in that great city of Buenos Aires, I was invited to participate in a “freedom march” to recall the day when General Farela and his military leaders toppled the government of Isabel Peron in the military coup of March 25, 1976. I was invited to do something I had never really done before, and that was to join a protest march for human rights, the rights that we so enjoy and take for granted in our country. These rights were brutally repressed during a decade in the life of Argentina, such as the right to free speech, to gather in assembly, to protest the government, to seek redress for crimes against humanity. This was the time of the “desparecidos” (the disappeared ones) the 30,000 or more who were picked up and taken from their homes or from the university and never seen or heard from again. We joined the “madres of the plaza de mayo” (the mothers of the famous plaza in the heart of the city).

These were the mothers who stood up to the military regime and gathered at the plaza every week to protest the disappearance of their children and grandchildren. They gathered to protest every week and never stopped until March of this year due to their age and infirmities. They gathered to protest in spite of the risk of their own disappearance and death during the military regime. They did it to demand an accounting for the disappearance of their loved ones. The founder of the movement, a mother herself, paid the ultimate price as she became one of the “disappeared ones” whose body was later discovered along the river’s edge. She, along with many others, had been thrown to their deaths from airplanes flying over the famous Rio de la Plata, or River Plate. To throw dissidents out of planes was a common occurrence during those years.

Well, this year was to be their last year to officially gather and protest on the famous Plaza de Mayo so to commemorate this tragic history, about 50,000 folks from all walks of life and backgrounds, from diverse denominations and traditions, Christian and non-Christian, decided to join the march for human rights, for the freedom to live in a free and just society and to demand that this memory of loss of human life never be forgotten! I joined other clergy and bishops of the church, ordained and laity, as we walked together to take our stand and make our voices heard among the multiplicity of God’s people.

As I joined the throng of people that day I was literally taken by the crowd for a couple of miles as dozens of drummers beat their kettle drums fiercely causing a cacophony of sound that ricocheted off of the tall, majestic buildings of the prominent avenue. There were scores of drums beating to the beat of a different drummer, if you will, as if shouting to the heavens above, a demand for justice, for freedom, for the truth, and the right to exist peaceably and without the threat of death if one opposed the government. It was the cry of the human spirit for liberation from falsehood. This was my introduction to the voice of the global south beckoning me to join the people in the struggle for human dignity no matter what the cost. I obviously did not and have not paid the ultimate price to keep my liberties or the liberties of others here or abroad, but I will tell you of one who did.

While attending the matriculation service at the seminary in Buenos Aires, I had the privilege of hearing Methodist Bishop Aldo Echegoyen speak to us about his experience during the brutal dictatorial regime of the 1970’s and early 80’s. He spoke to us about how he lost a dear colleague and friend; a brilliant seminary professor and scholar who dared to write and speak against the injustices of the military regime. He told us how his colleague had been a voice of protest during that time and how one day a group of men had come for his friend at the seminary and how his bullet-riddled body had been found the next day at the city dump. His was a very moving account of how he lost a dear friend who was not only a brilliant intellectual of high esteem, but a freedom fighter for the cause of justice and freedom.

He made it clear to us that there was a price to be paid in the defense of human dignity and that he and many others who lost their lives during that time had lived with the threat of death as a constant companion. The only thing that sustained them was their faith in God and the belief that no matter what happened to them, they would be vindicated in the end. The 50,000 marchers of protest that I joined on March 25 of this year in the capital city of Buenos Aires was a symbolic chorus of that vindication, a way of saying: Never again! This was a national event of remembering, of “not forgetting” what happened during that tragic period of Argentine history and a way of telling the world that those who stand for peace and justice and truth may become martyrs but they will not be forgotten.

In today’s gospel, we hear a story of division and struggle with what is true and right similar in a way to my experience in Argentina. We hear Jesus talking to his community being challenged as he raises notions of truth, and of freedom from those things that enslave and diminish life, freedom from certain belief systems and perspectives and practices that kept the religious community bound up in their prejudices and smug in the surety of their convictions. We hear Jesus talking to his community with words that caused division rather than unity, forcing people to take sides, if you will. Some became disciples and followed him, but others wanted to kill him. He was familiar with the threat of death, no stranger to it. His words appeared to be dangerous for some, yet life-giving for others.

There were questions concerning his authority, questions similar to the ones that we may face today when folks question our sense of call to the ministry and the right to speak on behalf of the Holy One. Many did not understand him or the purpose of his calling and the implications of his teachings. Some wanted to know who he really was, where he came from, and where he got his authority to say and do the things he did, in short, they wanted to know the source of his credentials, to back up his authority, not an uncommon practice even today. And once again we find Jesus speaking in cryptic language, pointing to the One who sent him as his Father, or as we would say in the Hispanic community, pointing to Diosito, the endearing God who knows us very well and who loves us, the one with whom we commune daily and talk to as friend. They question his knowledge of this God who is the source behind his praxis.

Interestingly enough, in order for Jesus to speak to them of any freedom at all, he has to speak to them of freedom in the context of sin, or those things that hold folks in bondage, such as an erroneous belief system, or a wrong way of seeing things, that keep folks enslaved to the past rather than free to embrace a new future or the possibility of a new thing that God might be doing among us.

French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote an essay some time ago that describes this kind of scenario from within the walls of a prison system. He describes a scenario in which prison guards are in a watchtower where they observe prisoners in their cells. They can see the prisoners at all times, but the prisoners cannot see them, yet the prisoners believe they are being watched at all times because of the nature and place of the watch tower in the prison system.

There comes a point in the life of the prison community where the system is so permanently ingested and internalized and etched in the psyche that the guards can withdraw from the tower at any time and the prisoners still feel and act as enslaved. He calls it the “internalized eye” the “watcher” within, the prisoner whose internal eye watches for the system. It is Foucault’s conviction that this internalized imprisonment happens in all societies where freedom is absent and where slavery of some kind is a permanent fixture in the psyche. For Jesus, the only way out of this kind of scenario is through His promise of freedom that leads to liberation. And yet this freedom almost invariably comes with a struggle.

Mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi–Diaz and other Hispanic and Latina theologians and ethicists call this acting for the liberation of others as the place of “la lucha” or the place where the “the struggle” takes place, be it for the liberation of the oppressed within us or of the larger community. As Bishop John Shelby Spong put it recently in an interview with Evan Smith of Texas Monthly, this place where “the struggle” happens is not a place of popularity.

In a time when the Church in all of her various expressions continues to struggle with her self-understanding and the role and authority of scripture in the life of the community one increasingly runs the risk of being not only unpopular, but also vilified and increasingly one may find oneself in one camp or another. You may find that it is a place of struggle to come to seminary to understand and to be understood, even when no consensus can be found “on matters of truth and doctrine” in our common life. The truth indeed seems to be found on a slippery slope these days and the truth bearer and the truth seeker often run the risk of collateral damage.

This place of the struggle for freedom within us or without us is not always a pleasant place and yet found well within the assemblies of our churches. Take for example, my own experience recently. While in Argentina, caught up in the fervor of the events down under, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail asking me if I would submit a Peace resolution at our synod assembly this past May as she was going to be in Europe attending a peace workshop and would not be able to deliver it.

Recalling my recent march in the streets of Buenos Aires, I agreed. I couldn’t think of a more noble cause in light of the war in Iraq and the potential for still other wars in other parts of the world. The resolution asked the voting members of the assembly to simply encourage congregations to study peace and if moved to do so, to join the Kairos movement, which is an ecumenical peace and justice initiative adopted by many Lutheran theologians and ethicists of the ELCA.

What I was not prepared for was the vehement outcry from the voting members of the assembly at the suggestion that we as a church should study what peace might look like in the world today. To my surprise and disappointment, the resolution was soundly defeated and I have to admit I was not prepared for this kind of response from my church. To be honest with you, I felt “foolish” up at the podium, as if being reprimanded by my church. At that point, I was forced to question the role of the church in the affairs of humanity even as I know that countless bishops of the church have spoken in favor of peace at a very difficult time in our nation’s history, a time when there are no easy answers. So to make light of it and laugh at myself, I told a friend that I was the one leaving the parking lot at 85 miles an hour!

So the question for me when I read this gospel for today is this: do we as a church separate ourselves from the affairs of humanity and apply a strict adherence to the doctrine of the separation of church and state, or in Lutheran terminology, adhere to the doctrine of the two kingdoms that we inherited from Saint Augustine and Luther, where one kingdom rules above and another one rules below, and turn a blind eye, if you will, to the affairs of the human family. Or do we dare to examine and apply the words of the Lord to the Prophet Jeremiah:

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations,” and even as Jeremiah protested such a call saying “I know not how to speak, for I am only a youth,” yet the Lord answered him: “Do not say, I am only a youth: for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you shall speak, Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth, See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant."

This act of consecration is an invitation that I believe still holds truth today and the added blessing of freedom for many. It is a call that came to us in our baptisms, one that urges us to examine what is true, to be faithful in the most difficult of times and circumstances, even to run the risk of unpopularity, and therein to find the true meaning of our callings. May truth, justice and freedom be found among us. Amen.