In the Breach

Thursday 11/27/2014 4:57 AM

Today is my fifty-ninth birthday and it is also Thanksgiving Day. Psalm 90, my psalm for the week delivers a good reminder that human life lasts about seventy or eighty years, that it goes by quickly. I need to remember that if I want to gain a heart of wisdom.

My birthday and Thanksgiving Day have been overshadowed by events in Ferguson, MO, where a grand jury failed to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of a black teenager, Michael Brown. There have been protests and riots throughout the country as citizens rise up against the systemic injustice of our judicial system toward minorities and especially toward African-Americans. Today my reading includes a meditation written by Jesuit Father Luis Espinal shortly before his assassination by paramilitary forces on March 22, 1980, in La Paz, Bolivia. Nearly thirty-five years have passed since then and thousands of miles separate the events but his writing is a good reminder for me.

There are Christians who have hysterical reactions,

as if the world would have slipped out of God’s hands.

They act violently as if they were risking everything.

But we believe in history;

the world is not a roll of the dice going toward chaos.

A new world has begun to happen since Christ has risen…

Jesus Christ, we rejoice in your definitive triumph…

with our bodies still in the breach

and our souls in tension,

we cry out our first “Hurrah!”

till eternity unfolds itself.

Your sorrow has now passed.

Your enemies have failed.

You are a definitive smile for humankind.

What matter the wait now for us?

We accept the struggle and the death;

because you, our love, will not die!

We march behind you,

on the road to the future.

You are with us

and you are our immortality!

Take away the sadness from our faces.

We are not in a game of chance…

You have the last word!

Beyond the crushing of our bones,

now has begun the eternal “alleluia!”

From the thousand openings of our wounded bodies

and souls there arises now a triumphal song!

So, teach us to give voice to your new life throughout all the world.

Because you dry the tears from the eyes of the oppressed forever…

and death will disappear…

As I age it is easy to become cynical about the wrongs that are in the world ever changing for the better. It seems that the purveyors of evil and injustice are prevailing over those of righteousness and justice, and no amount of protesting or fighting against it will change it for the better.

I like the imagery used by Father Espinal, where he describes our bodies as being in the breach. The image that I get is being a bullet in the breach of God’s gun that is aimed at righting the wrongs in the world. God uses his people to effect change; but he doesn’t use the same weapons as the world. He calls me to love, and to exhibit righteousness and justice in my interactions with others. I need to remember that I am part of a great battle but I must not despair, thinking the outcome of the battle is up for grabs. God has the last word and he has already spoken. I pray that I will be an outspoken voice promoting hope and new life in Christ and that I will have a part in drying the tears of the oppressed rather than being the cause of their tears.