Toward Sunday (Page 59)

Worship this Sunday will be rooted in this passage from Jeremiah 31.31-34 and in the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero. 

Walter Brueggeman (in ON Scripture) writes, “But now in the book of Jeremiah, in the wake of brokenness and its resultant shame, defeat, and anxiety, Jeremiah asserts God’s resolve to renew the covenant that has been broken by ancient Israel.  It will be a renewed covenant, but one that stands in continuity with that of Sinai…This will be for Israel a genuine starting over!  The ground for such starting over is to be found, singularly, in God’s ready resolve to begin anew. God, says Jeremiah, is ready to forgive and to forget, so that the renewed relationship is one of generosity and grace on God’s part…(in this passage…) God here resolves to restore relationship with deported Jews, most likely those in Babylon. This new resolve of God involved homecoming the deportees to Jerusalem and resulted in the formation of Judaism as an outgrowth of the faith of ancient Israel. Because of God’s readiness, Israel begins again!”

Oscar Romero was a Roman Catholic priest who was appointed Archbishop of El Salvador in 1977.  At the time of his appointment, El Salvador was experiencing widespread violence as conflict escalated between the vast majority of poor people in the country and the government.  Upon his appointment as Archbishop, most people believed Romero would side with the wealthy establishment and the military as violence erupted in El Salvador.  

On March 12, 1977, just a few weeks after his appointment Archbishop, a fellow priest and friend of Romero who had been working with poor people in the countryside (campesinos) was assassinated.  This experience broke Romero open.  He wrote, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’”  

Romero experienced God writing a new covenant on his heart. He would never be the same.  He had spent his life in libraries and in sanctuaries.  His life was now lived on the streets and in the countryside with the poor of his country.  Romero was broken open into solidarity with the poor in El Salvador.  He wrote, “If some day they take away the radio station from us . . . if they don’t let us speak, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left a people without priests, each one of you must become God’s microphone, each one of you must become a prophet.”  In other words, each one of us must be broken open to God’s writing a new covenant on our hearts.

Have you been broken open into solidarity with the poor?  If so, what has that experience been like for you?  How did the experience change you?  How has the memory of the experience faded as you’ve continued to journey?  

Romero calls each one of us to become a prophet, like Jeremiah.  What questions or challenges or fears or hopes does the call to be a prophet create within you?