23 December 2004

Due to a big ice storm in Columbus and no electricity all over the place - this post is a bit late.



Right before Christmas it is good to begin again with "A Passion for the Possible."



When I was a boy in public school I was told that in America we have rich people and poor people, and there was no connection between them. Years later, in New Your City, I often heard well-to-do people say that while New York was the adrenaline capital of the world, the most exciting city with the best of everything, "we also have problems - a lot of poor people." Reading the Bible, I found the problem defined differently. In the Bible, it's always the rich who are a problem to the poor, never the other way around. There are poor people because there are rich people, a connection Oscar Romero, the martyred Roman Catholic leader of El Salvador, never failed to make by calling the many poor in his country not los pobres but los apobrecidos "the impoverished," those "made poor."



Isn't it amazing how insightful the Bible can be. That could be the reason why many folks simply use a verse here and a verse there to point out what they consider to be the problems of the world. For if we read the whole story we would encounter again and again the kind of brokenness that is not a problem "out there" or "with them" but rather one that is as close to home as...well my home and my kind. Yesterday I heard that the stock market hit a high that hasn't been reached since early in 2003. It was an announcement of Good News to a world that lives by what we have and to hell with the real Good News of the Reign of God that seeks to liberate and make whole all of God's beloved.



Connection: Remember that Bishop Oscar Romero was once a bishop for the rich...then he was changed by the Good News and he, like Jesus, sided with the poor and stood up to the rich. Then one day in the middle of the mass - he was executed...and it wasn't some crazy poor person. To be a living witness to the domain of God's Rule will always be an adventure that cuts across what people around us want and expect.



Lift us up, O God, so that we can see how your love is the power that makes us free and liberates all who are thrown down as though they are nothing at all. Grant us courage to walk in your ways Amen.