Sunday 12 19 10 Reflection

This last Sunday of Advent I wanted reflect on the feminine maternal dimension in our salvation story before we head of to Christmas and the story focus changes. Here are some of the reflections from my sermon. Please let me know your thoughts and reflections:

It was early in December, the year was 1531. It has been ten long years of suffering for the Aztec people since the Conquistador Cortez invaded Mexico.  Aztec civilization is in its death throes; more ravaged by epidemic disease brought by the Spanish than by their swords. Recent genetic studies on the skeletal remains of native peoples of the times have found that while many hundreds of thousands Aztecs were killed by violence, an even higher number, perhaps as high as 85%, died by disease.

We catch sight of one lone peasant walking along a road, he is going to visit his uncle who is dying from the Spanish plague. His name is Juan Diego, a recent convert to Christianity. Hearing beautiful music, he stops in his tracks and turns to see a young brown native maiden in shimmering robes who speaks to him in his own native Nahuatl tongue. Who are you? He asks. "Call me Little Girl, Young Daughter, Mother of my People", she says.

The young girl tells Juan Diego to go to the palace of the Archbishop of Mexico and to tell him that Mary the Mother of God wishes that a temple be built at Tepayac – the worship site for the indigenous mother GoddessTonantzin. From this church Mary will be able to give all her love to the inhabitants of the land ... to hear their lamentations and remedy their pain and suffering. After two unsuccessful attempts to convince the bishop of the vision, Juan Diego is sent by the maiden to find roses in wintertime in the desert where no roses could be found. Finally when again he is standing before the Bishop and his court, Juan Diego unfolds his shawl and impossibly beautiful roses fall to the ground and there in the cloak is the image of the Indian Maiden.

What do we make of such a story? If you were to ask the minister that I grew up under, at my little Presbyterian church on the West Side of San Antonio – he would, with great emotion, argue that the whole thing was an inside job. The Catholic Church unable to make headway with the pesky natives created a Mary that would speak to the people of the land-a dark skinned native Mary.

Even as a young boy I was a skeptic at heart, so his argument spoke to me, but when I ran with it and suggested that maybe the Jesus appearance to the disciples, after his death, was an inside job also…he gave me a swat on the behind and said, “Do you want me to tell your mother what you said?” The Catholic church at the time, seemed just as skeptical as my minister. Their response to this vision of Mary, ranged from condemnation to silence.

Whether vision or stratagem…history shows that the story spread among the people and around her image the Mexican people were able to reconstruct out of devastation and death a new identity, a new future.

But what is it’s importance for us today? Well…I think the story, however you come to it, continues to have a message for today.

Juan Diego comes to us with a message from the young maiden. Guadalupe is calling to us to build a very particular kind of church? For the church to be evangelized by Juan Diego, to hear the message of Little Girl, Young Daughter, Mother of my People, Juan Diego must help us overcome some significant barriers, which I am not sure we will ever do without the help of God.

First, the church must overcome our problems with God being revealed to us in the person of a woman. Part of this problem for Protestants/Presbyterians has been our rejection of Mary. Historically at the Reformation and after, our forefathers reacted to what they saw as the Catholic deification of Mary, in other words, placing Mary as part of the divine being.

But instead of minimizing her importance, the church completely ignored Mary, and feared any feminine reference to God in the Bible, to the extent that we have lost a part of our story that allows us to see God as revealed in the life of a woman. As we have journeyed through Advent, and heard again the stories:

Mary and the angel, accepting the call of God.

Mary and Elizabeth, two pregnant women finding their way.

Mary and Joseph, struggling with difficult decisions.

Mary and Joseph on their journey, with a baby on the way…

It is hard not to miss the feminine maternal dimension in the salvation that God has brought us. And I am not talking about the submissive, passive icon, the  perfect Mary that is often presented to us in paintings, sculpture and children’s books. Guadalupe beckons to us from the periphery calling us to recognize the divine image that exists in every woman and to overcome the sexism that so marginalizes women in both church and society still today.

In the young pregnant peasant girl we can see that God's salvation is tender like a mothers love, is fierce like a lover’s, and radical like a sister in the struggle.

But Juan Diego’s job is not done, he will also have to help the church respond to a God who is revealed to us as a person of color "La Morenita", the little brown one, the Indian.  Guadalupe challenges the historic racism of church and society and our constant temptation to make one cultural form the supreme expression of reality. 

For as Spain, France and England competed for the acquisition and development of this new American Empire the church debated whether these people of color, whether indigenous to the Americas or shipped in from Africa had souls, could even be called human. Of course they had to come to this conclusion in order to justify to themselves what they were prepared to do to get their land and to exploit their labor.

In 500 years of the history of the Americas, the church has yet to heal itself. God continues to call out to the church through the face of a woman of color, challenging us to find healing for our racism and reconciliation between the races. 

One more challenge to the church…and it comes in the face of her messenger, Juan Diego, the poorest peasant class of landless, exploited labor. She brought a message from the periphery, carried by the most humble peasant to the wealthiest, most powerful in the land, the bishop of Spain's richest empire. Mary calls the church to re-inhabit the periphery, the edges of society among the poor, the displaced, those considered to be non-persons.

You know, if I have any beef with Mary showing up 500 years ago or today, it’s not with the validity, we all have our points at which we just believe, but why does Mary seem to be doing all the work? Yes, Jesus shows up on a tortilla or a tree trunk every now and then…but that’s it! And what about Joseph…can’t they get him off his duff for a few minutes, away from the bowl games, to make a visit now and them. And what about Moses or Isaiah, Abraham and Paul...? No choirs of angles singing in the hill country anymore.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but Mary has shown up again…on the side of an apartment complex in New Braunfels. No message yet, just the faint outline of her robe.

La Morenita continues to call out to the church of the rich, the powerful, to find our true identity with Jesus on the periphery, with her son Jesus on the margins, among the outcast, among the poor. She calls to us to build a church that  truly celebrates diversity. A church that listens to the poor. A church that speaks with a voice of compassion.

Where such a church lives, roses bloom in winter. 

Where such a church lives, the world is pregnant with possibilities.