Preaching in/and the Borderlands. Группа авторов
will fall away, because they didn’t stick together.
Instead they will betray one another and hate one another because they will fight over who is suffering the most while the poor ones will be killed.
And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold.
But anyone who endures to the end will be saved. “
The endurance that saves is the one that has all its trust in God. The endurance that saves is the endurance that pauses, that gets to know oneself and give attention to our interiors. The endurance that saves faces the daily threats to take away the lives of our people and keep the struggle! By the power of Holy Spirit! Endurance that knows how to sustain a combination of deep breaths, narratives and actions that are able to resist and counter the unruly, irresponsible, vitriolic and viciously violent use of the state machine of our time. The endurance that saves offers sobering courage to rise every mourning and go where people are placed on the cross!
The endurance that saves offers holy anger every afternoon and in a Fanonian way, “demanding human behavior from the other” and the end of unnecessary human suffering. The endurance that saves offers fierce love that resurrects us every evening, fierce love that helps to recollect ourselves so we can make a vigil with the most vulnerable. The endurance that saves stays at the borderland no matter what!
So, go out and get yourself even more committed to the poor, the undocumented, the immigrants and the refugees, join organizations that are working for change on the ground. If you go there, at the border, you will see that the challenges are way too intense and immense and the paradoxes insurmountable. And that it will keep us all very humble! Truly loving our people! And also, fired up so we can endure these times! And keep madness at bay.
May God bless us.
1. This sermon-article combines two sermons with newer annotations preached at the Hispanic Summer Program 2018 at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas, in June 2018.
2. Matt 24: 1–14, NRSV.
3. Harvey, Facebook page, June 15, 2018 at 9:50 AM.
4. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 218–22.
5. Strategic essentialism is “a political tactic employed by a minority group acting on the basis of a shared identity in the public arena in the interests of unity during a struggle for equal rights. The term was coined by Spivak and has been influential in feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial theory.”
6. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 381.
7. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 418–19.
8. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 360–62
9. In contrast to the notion that Anzaldúa maps a particular journey applicable only to other individual journeys, this shift from individual to collective perspective indicates that this critical mobility ideally enjoins others in its processes and perhaps achieves greater force through this intensification. It also practically recognizes that the transformations it enacts or foresees might exceed the individual frame, creating necessary collectivities. Her discussion here challenges exclusionary paradigms of nation, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexuality with the very terms that appear to authorize them, signaling a project of renewal that also requires resignification. Delgadillo, Spiritual Mestizaje, 224–28.
10. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 385–91.
11. Job 12:7–8, NRSV.
12. Wang, “‘My next call is to ICE’.”
13. Magness, “He ranted at Spanish speakers.”
14. Maduro, Maps for a Fiesta.
15. Eustáquio de Souza, “Geraldo Eustáquio de Souza” (my translation).
2
Why I’m Here
—Miguel A. De La Torre
José was a simple man who worked with his calloused hands. He built things, trying to make a living as a carpenter; but times were hard, and taxes were high. In spite of the foreign military occupation of his homeland, there simply was no time to become involved with any of those revolutionary groups doing maneuvers and hiding in the wilderness. He kept his head down and worked hard, barely keeping food on the table for his rapidly growing family. Although a newlywed for a couple of months, his wife María already gave birth to a child that wasn’t his, a healthy boy. On this particular night, José was scared. He ran through the sleeping town, silently making his way toward his makeshift home, praying and hoping he wasn’t too late. He had to save his family from certain death! He burst into his shack going straight to the sleeping mats on the dirt floor. “Despierta mi amor, wake up my love,” José told his wife as he gently shook her. “A messenger just warned me la milicia, the militia, will be coming for us. I fear we will disappear! Apúrate, hurry up, we must leave this moment for a safer land, far from the reaches of this brutal dictatorship.” There was no time to pack any belongings or personal mementoes, nor was there time to bid farewell to friends and family. In the middle of the night, literally a few steps before the National Guard, José took his small family into el exilio, the exile. They would come to a foreign country, wearing only the clothes on their backs. Even though they could not speak the language, nor understand the idiosyncrasies of the dominant culture, at least they were physically safe. Salvation for this poor family was found south of the border.16
Over two millenniums ago this family arrived in Egypt as political refugees, fleeing the tyrannical regime of Herod. Almost fifty-seven years ago my own father came home to his wife, my mother, with similar news. Because of his involvement with the former political regime, he was now marked for death by the newly installed government. If caught, he would surely face a firing squad. They gathered me, their six-month-old child, and headed north, arriving in this country literally with only the clothes on their backs. Like Jesús, I too was a child political refugee
The story of God’s people is the story of aliens. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are the stories of aliens attempting to survive among a people not their own in a land they cannot claim. If they were living today, we would probably call them undocumented immigrants, or the more pejorative term: “illegal”. The people who came to be called Jews, are a people formed in the foreign land of Egypt. They become a nation while traversing the desert, having no land to claim as their own. They experienced exile in a far-off place called Babylon and disenfranchisement on their own terrain due to colonial military occupation by a foreign empire, Rome.
Throughout the biblical text we are reminded of God’s concern for the alien and the stranger who resides among us. Aliens and strangers in the Bible are those who have been victimized, oppressed, or enslaved by others; those who are vulnerable because they lack family connections or support; and those whose nationality or religion differs from the dominant