Monday Sermon – Latinxs Spirit / Hispanic Summer Program 2017
John 14:15-18
15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees her nor knows it. You know it, because The Spirit abides with you, and will be in you.
18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
El Spirito eres Latino!
Yes, The Spirit is Latina!
Por supuesto, the Holy Spirt is Latinxs!
We are living under perilous times! Times of fear and shock, pesadillas, assombros and pandemonios. The spirit of our times is the spirit of fear that enforces 4 D’s: dissolution, desolation, dismantling and disasters. Y tambien un otro “d” que es “deveras,” no tenemos la plata!
First D. Our communities are living under the unbearable fear that our frail lives might enter into full dissolution at any minute. Our lives can enter in dissolution by some unexpected and unlawful visitation/violation of La Migra, taking those of our families away; Our lives can enter in dissolution if we lose our jobs; Our lives can enter in dissolution if we can’t pay the debts we have for the studies we are doing! Many are just a breath away from utter dissolution.
Second D. Our communities are living under the abandonment and desolation of any form of help! Common resources have been driven to the rich and desolating our very communities. Desolation looms large as we struggle to find agency or better forms of combating both the abandonment of the state and the many forms of state sanctioned violence and death.
Third D. Our communities are living under the current dismantling of our familias, both here in US by the government and its immigration policies, the denial of the DREAM ACT; but also the dismantling of our familias back home, in our own countries, where the absence of the state, violence, narco-trafico and las gangas are indeed dismantling the social threads of our living together.
Fourth D. If we look with Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history,” we will see that the history of the people of color in this country is one of disaster, one that can be counted among the pillage of kidnaping, slavery, losses, exploitation and death.
I am always somewhat appalled by how people are indignant with Trump these days because they see how much they are losing. And I always want to ask: where were you a year ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 50 years ago? 300 hundred years ago? Because the history of reds, blacks, browns, yellows and also many whites in this country and throughout the Americas have always been a history of continuous disasters. We are the people who have always lost.
Just to tell one old and recent history of loss and disaster, let me mention Cerro de Pasco, Peru. Cerro de Pasco is located 4000 meters above the sea, one of the highest villages in the country. It was founded in the sixteen-century and is rich in silver, zinc and cobber. Manuel Scorza, a writer who died too young, left us a trilogy of novels that tells us the story of Cerro de Pasco, its historical destruction and the killings of the people between 1950 and 1962.
In these novels, we hear a scream as well as an exasperated denunciation of the dissolution, desolation, dismantling and ongoing disasters of the people and the earth by colonial powers since the discovery of its rich natural resources. But the first death of that people narrated by Scorza in these three novels needs to be counted by another set of novels, novels that tells us about the recent dissolution, desolation, dismantling, ongoing disasters and finally the death of that place.
It was La Cerro de Pasco Corporation, a mining company that came to that area and wiped away all the natural resources of that pueblo. They poisoned su tierra, su ayre y su agua and Cerro De Pasco has become an inhabited town, an unlivable place with people still living there. This mining company has devoured houses, hospitals, schools and people’s market. El tajo (The pit) is 1.2 miles wide and as deep as the Empire State Building is tall. An immense whole swallowing everything around it.
Most of its 70 thousand inhabitants’ area must leave now for there is almost nothing left for them. The people of Pasco has just accepted a plan to be remove elsewhere under an uncertain plan that might take 15 years to be finalized.
The history of Cerro de Pasco is marked first by farse, and second by tragedy! Farse with the arrival of a colonized state of organizing life, and then as tragedy, with the complete capitalistic erasure of natural resources and people. Farse by the lies of patriotic identities, dreams of civilization, proper conduct as human beings, and religious beliefs and salvation that erased knowledges, broke community ties, stole people’s own resources and denied people’s self-affirmation. And tragedy by the coloniality of oppression through ruthless destruction of what sustains us as people by the consortium of the private-state and transnational capitalism. Farse and tragedy are repetitions of history, leaving us lost, with 500 years of repeated trauma, detached from each other and with the feeling that we have no say in this world.
Marx’s pattern of history first as farse and then as tragedy can be said to be an overarching hermeneutical politics of the histories of our people.
However, Manuel Scorza not only tells the farse and tragedy of the people of Casco in his three novels. He also tells us about the stories of resistance and the challenges posed to the state-capitalistic consortium. Histories that kept our people alive, as much as they can and could. At the heart of these novels The Latinxs Spirit subjugating its disastrous situation!
It is in between the mix of farse, tragedy and resistance that lives the Latinxs Spirit of God! The indigenous spirits of life! The African, African American, Asian and Asian American Spirits of life! The Buddhist breathing of life! The Muslim prophetic spirit of life! All of these spirits sustaining life in the midst of dissolution, desolation, dismantling and disasters.
So I want to say that the Latinxs Christian Spirit, a Spirit that lives in various ways and forms crossing many boundaries is the Spirit who came from Jesus Christ. In our text Jesus says:
16 I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
It is this Spirit that helped our people to survived, to be resilient! Because they know they are not alone! They are not orphaned! They are not abandoned! They are not forgotten!
The latinxs Spirit of truth is our compa, com-pane, companion with breath, feeding us day and night!
It is the spirit of truth breathed on us through our mothers and grandmothers, friends, sons, daughters and granddaughters and grandsons that keep us alive!
It is the Latinxs spirit of truth that manifests itself in queer and precious ways sustaining our very lives in spite of death threads and fears of scarcity!
It is the Latinxs Spirit of truth that gives us abundance even if we have been stolne for more than 500 years!
The Latinxs Spirit of God is creative and comes to us through orthodoxies and heterodoxies, orthopraxis and heterodopraxis, through passion and joys, through hard labor, juegos and chistes, art, creativity and fun!
Even in the midst of dissolution, desolation, dismantling and disasters, the Espirito Santo Latinxs de Dios breathes life into our broken bones! Y esta vivo! Ridiculously alive! Absurdly alive!
It is the Latinxs Spirit that have brought you this far! And right here!
It is the Latinxs Spirit that will keep us all alive!
It is the Latinxs Spirit of our ancestors that will keep on whispering the words of life in our ears: LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!
A snapshot of Professor @ccarvalhaes' sermon today at #HSP2017
Dr. Carvalhaes is a Professor at @UnionSeminary in #NYC pic.twitter.com/rnqiiq4gd7
— Hispanic Summer Prog (@HSummerProgram) June 19, 2017
It is the Spirit that lives in the seeds in the earth and in the leaves of the trees that will make us pay attention to the earth who is still alive!
It is the Spirit singing in the chirping of the birds that will remind us that we are alive and going!
It is the wisdom of our elders, here represented by our teachers, that we will point to where the wind is blowing!
This Spirit, the Latinxs Spirit will give us freedom to engage with anybody from any other religion and call them our queer brothers and sisters and part of our big familias!
So pay attention!
Throughout this week you will be challenged to listen to the Latinx Spirit of God! Even in places you never imagined! What is it, she he, they, speaking to you?
If you want to know where the Latinxs spirit of God is, be aware that it always comes through our senses, through our bodies! As Jaci Maraschin from Brazil said: “It is in the body that we are Spirit!”
So, for us to start thinking about a new Latinxs pneumatology of the Spirit I’d say we need to consider five things:
First, we must undo the dualism between transcendent and immanent. We don’t need this Greek division. We can delve into the knowledges of Indigenous people, of our ancestors and twist and complicate this dichotomy. For God is only transcendent as God is immanent. Without incarnation God doesn’t even exist! The more immanent we become the more transcendental we become.
Second, and spinning out of the first point, we must shift the work of the Spirit being only in our culture and move it to nature. Forget multiculturalism! Let us do multinaturalism where we see the Spirit moving in a world made of many natural humanities, including the humanities of animals and all living creatures! So the Spirit is not a Spirit of multi-culturalisms but of multiple naturalisms and humanities living in one general culture. This is the only way to consider indigenous people as the same as ourselves and live in equal terms of rights and levels of honor with animals and plants. The destruction of the earth is grounded in a division between culture and nature that must be undone by the movement of the Spirit who lives in the many humanities.
Third, we must consider the Holy Spirit as the one who makes choices! As a full-fledged liberation theologian myself, I must confess that I believe that the Holy Spirit, the same as God and Jesus Christ, has a preferential option for the poor! Well you can ask, how come this can be possible? Doesn’t the Spirit care for everyone? Yes I’d say, the Spirit does! But as a pastor who cares for the lost sheep, a parent who tends its best attention to its sick child, the Spirit cares first for those who need the Spirit the most. The other 99 sheep can wait. They have enough to keep going. Like the people who have money. They can keep going. They/we have health insurance, bank accounts and therapists and so on. They/we can wait!
Fourth, the Spirit lives in lo cotidiano, that is loco y diário! That means that the Spirit is in the midst of the people, from harvesting the fields to street negotiations, from school’s education and children playing. That means that the Spirit can be found first in life and second in ideas! So we go to life first, to the comunidads, to the cotidiano, to the places where people are facing dissolution, desolation, dismantling and disasters. There, we will find the Spirit!
Fifth, the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of fire, wind, water and earth, is forged in the struggle! Only by joining into the daily struggle and in solidariedad com los oprimidos that one “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3: 18)
For…
The Latinxs Spirit is with those who have been denied and stolen for generations!
The Latinxs Spirit is with those who have no-documents in this country or anywhere!
The Latinxs Spirit is with our families dealing with violence at home and trying to make ends meet!
The Latinxs Spirit is with the mothers crying for their lost sons and daughters!
The Latinxs Spirit is in the songs they sing! It is in the stories they tell! It is in the maiz they plant and harvest!
The Latinxs Spirit is in the tortillas and the salsa que pica!
The Latinxs Spirit is with the street vendors selling lemons and mangos, yelado y tamales!
The Latinxs Spirit is in the sweat of whole days of work for very little money.
The Latinxs Spirit is with those who live day by day with ambre! Hunger!
The Latinxs Spirit is with those desplazados, taken away from their own land!
The Latinxs Spirit is in the dance and in the rejoicing with each other’s accomplished of the day!
The Latinxs Spirit is in honoring of each other’s bodies!
The Latinxs Spirit is with you studying and preparing yourself so you can become a mighty fortress to your own people!
So you can become healers of your own people!
So you can become prophets to the powers that be!
So you can bring bread and be companions to your own people!
It is the Latinxs Spirit is in our very notion of what the Americas mean. Let us watch a video and listen to a song by Residente, Calle 12 called Latinoamérica.
Soy
Soy lo que dejaron
Soy toda la sobra de lo que te robaron
Un pueblo escondido en la cima
Mi piel es de cuero por eso aguanta cualquier clima
Soy una fábrica de humo
Mano de obra campesina para tu consumo
Frente de frio en el medio del verano
El amor en los tiempos del cólera, mi hermano
El sol que nace y el día que muere
Con los mejores atardeceres
Soy el desarrollo en carne viva
Un discurso político sin saliva
Las caras más bonitas que he conocido
Soy la fotografía de un desaparecido
La sangre dentro de tus venas
Soy un pedazo de tierra que vale la pena
Soy una canasta con frijoles
Soy maradona contra inglaterra anotándote dos goles
Soy lo que sostiene mi bandera
La espina dorsal del planeta es mi cordillera
Soy lo que me enseño mi padre
El que no quiere a su patria no quiere a su madre
Soy américa latina
Un pueblo sin piernas pero que camina, oye
Tú no puedes comprar al viento
Tú no puedes comprar al sol
Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia
Tú no puedes comprar el calor
Tú no puedes comprar las nubes
Tú no puedes comprar los colores
Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría
Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores
Tú no puedes comprar al viento
Tú no puedes comprar al sol
Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia
Tú no puedes comprar el calor
Tú no puedes comprar las nubes
Tú no puedes comprar los colores
Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría
Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores
Tengo los lagos, tengo los ríos
Tengo mis dientes pa` cuando me sonrío
La nieve que maquilla mis montañas
Tengo el sol que me seca y la lluvia que me baña
Un desierto embriagado con bellos de un trago de pulque
Para cantar con los coyotes, todo lo que necesito
Tengo mis pulmones respirando azul clarito
La altura que sofoca
Soy las muelas de mi boca mascando coca
El otoño con sus hojas desmalladas
Los versos escritos bajo la noche estrellada
Una viña repleta de uvas
Un cañaveral bajo el sol en cuba
Soy el mar caribe que vigila las casitas
Haciendo rituales de agua bendita
El viento que peina mi cabello
Soy todos los santos que cuelgan de mi cuello
El jugo de mi lucha no es artificial
Porque el abono de mi tierra es natural
Tú no puedes comprar al viento
Tú no puedes comprar al sol
Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia
Tú no puedes comprar el calor
Tú no puedes comprar las nubes
Tú no puedes comprar los colores
Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría
Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores
Não se pode comprar o vento
Não se pode comprar o sol
Não se pode comprar a chuva
Não se pode comprar o calor
Não se pode comprar as nuvens
Não se pode comprar as cores
Não se pode comprar minha’legria
Não se pode comprar minhas dores
No puedes comprar al sol
No puedes comprar la lluvia
Vamos caminando
Vamos dibujando el camino
No puedes comprar mi vida
Mi tierra no se vende
Trabajo bruto pero con orgullo
Aquí se comparte, lo mío es tuyo
Este pueblo no se ahoga con marullos
Y si se derrumba yo lo reconstruyo
Tampoco pestañeo cuando te miro
Para que recuerdes mi apellido
La operación cóndor invadiendo mi nido
Perdono pero nunca olvido, oye
Aquí se respira lucha
(Vamos caminando)
Yo canto porque se escucha (vamos caminando)
Aquí estamos de pie
Que viva la América
No puedes comprar mi vida
We are leftovers of what we were robbed!
We are a people without legs that walks
Nobody can take away our joys, our pains
Nobody can buy our Spirit!
We are Latinoamérica!!!
The Spirit of God in the midst of our people become the Latinx Spirit. Jesus has promised us to send you the Spirit of truth, an eternal companion so you will never ever be alone!
