How do you solve a problem like María?
Posted: December 6, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Guadalupe, ministry, preaching 2 Comments »Next Monday, December 12, is the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It’s a special time to remember the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego so many years ago. For many Mexican people, Guadalupe is a sign of welcome, hope, and faith.
In my conversations with Mexican Lutherans, it appears that they are either fervent guadalupanos luteranos, or they are very strictly anti-Guadalupe, with not much in the middle. Some Lutheran congregations integrate devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe into their liturgical practice and community celebration. A very large congregation in Fort Worth is named after her, and was featured in The Lutheran a few months ago. Conversely, both Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe are conspicuously absent from the list of commemorations in the front of Libro de Liturgia y Cántico, our Spanish-language Lutheran hymnal. In my congregation, we have people with firm beliefs on both sides. On the one hand, when I visit people, quite a few homes have images of her displayed prominently, and more than a handful of women and girls are named Guadalupe, Lupina, Lupe, or other variations. She’s on jewelry, bumper stickers, and baseball caps. On the other hand, others think it’s too Roman Catholic, and inappropriate for us as Lutherans. To be Lutheran is to not have images, I’m often told.
Personally, I’m quite sympathetic to the argument that ELCA pastor Maxwell E. Johnson makes in The Virgin of Guadalupe: Theological Reflection of an Anglo-Lutheran Liturgist, that there is room for the Virgin in protestant worship. As a white guy from Iowa, I did not grow up with Guadalupe as any part of my religious faith development. I first started to develop an appreciation for her story when I served as intern at a New York congregation that celebrated December 12 with much gusto. That congregation had a giant mural depicting the Virgin standing hand in hand with Martin Luther and Frederick Douglass, emphasizing the beautiful racial collaboration in that place.
When you get down to it, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a rather Lutheran story. Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that the Gospel could be understood in the language of the people. The Virgin speaks to Juan Diego in his language so that he may understand. In the spirit of the priesthood of all believers, Juan Diego becomes an unlikely evangelist, speaking truth to the power of the colonial religious establishment.
Whereas I think Guadalupe is a beautiful way of recognizing God’s subversive way of bringing justice and peace into our world, I also note that her devotion raises some theological question. I’m starting to become the imperialism aspect of it. Sometimes I do think that she becomes a sign of Mexican nationalism, and I wonder how welcoming she is for non-Mexican Latino/as. On internship with folks from many countries, the bulletin suggested changing the words in one of the Virgin hymns to “somos cristianos” instead of “somos mexicanos,” (“We’re Christians” instead of “We’re Mexicans”) but most people still sang it as they knew it.
So what do I preach this weekend? I get that the Virgin of Guadalupe is an important part of personal devotional life for many in my congregation, but I also want to respect the bound consciences of those with some discomfort. I realize that as a new pastor, especially as a new Anglo pastor in a Mexican community, it takes some time to build up some trust before preaching on controversial and potentially divisive topics. I have, however, mentioned Juan Diego in a recent sermon. I was talking about how some folks have intense and dramatic encounters in the course of their faith journeys. I did mention him in the same breath as Moses, Martin Luther, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter.
I’ll have plenty of years to preach my “Guadalupe is a really Lutheran story” sermon. I think I’ll wait for an opportunity. There will always be a chance to tell that message. Maybe I’m timidly squelching indigenous religious experience by my silence. On the other hand, I want to respect my pastoral colleagues and not preach a theology that is 180 degrees from the theology of some of my predecessors, especially on a topic that is so close to many hearts. This year, I’ll stay with Mary’s song from Luke’s Gospel. They’re Advent words that call us to start thinking about the radical transformation that God is about in the world. It’s a message of hope and justice that we all could keep hearing again and again.
Advent at San Lucas
Posted: December 3, 2011 Filed under: Context, Mexico, Ministry, Stewardship Leave a comment »Advent is here at San Lucas—waiting, watching, preparing. After our worship service on Thanksgiving Eve, we lingered around, sipping hot chocolate and noshing on pumpkin pie, decorating the sanctuary with Advent greenery. Our regular Wednesday night Bible study is on hiatus so we can gather for Evening Prayer these December nights. In a few weeks, we’ll celebrate Las Posadas, the beautiful Mexican tradition of reenacting Mary and Joseph’s search for respite and lodging en route to Bethlehem.
In my first months as pastor here, I have felt a sense of welcome and hospitality. As the congregations and I have adapted to one another, we learn. My Spanish is getting better, and I’m gaining sensitivity to nuances of Mexican culture. I’m figuring out the process of bridge-crossing. The food bank continues to feed local families. A new guitar group has been developed to rise up worship music leadership. The Word is proclaimed; sacraments are administered. We journey together.
Week after week, a vanload of San Lucans heads across into Piedras Negras, Coahuila, to worship at Cristo Rey, our Lutheran mission site about 13 miles away in Mexico. I am one of just a few ELCA pastors who preach in more than one country on any given Sunday. Once a month, nearly fifty Cristo Rey families receive some food assistance. It is getting more difficult to bring food and supplies across the border. We’ve started to buy more food in Mexico instead of risking crossing at the bridge. In October, we were not allowed to bring medicines for the free medical clinic across the border. There seem to be more Mexican soldiers near the bridge.
Advent is a time of hopeful anticipation. Here are some things to watch for at San Lucas in the time ahead:
- Training a few new assisting ministers
- Introducing an occasional childrens’ sermon
- Some sort of ecological project—perhaps a community garden or maybe a goat or two
- More intentional stewardship education
- Developing a leadership team at Cristo Rey
- Hosting a Cub Scout pack at San Lucas
Come and see! We sincerely hope that you consider visiting us at San Lucas and Cristo Rey some time in the next year. You can read this blog and check out pictures posted on facebook, but there’s no better way to understand the ministry here than to visit. Because the church property had long ago been an orphanage, San Lucas has dorm space available for visiting groups. Past congregational contingents have done cleaning and construction projects, helped with the food bank, and hosted medical clinics and health fairs. A fun potential project for a first-time mission partner congregation might be to help with a Saturday afternoon children’s event and/or help prepare a community meal. When you come, we can go to see the controversial federal border fence in downtown Eagle Pass so you can get a firsthand glimpse at our human boundaries. There have been concerns about safety and security along the border. We do take precautions. Both church campuses are surrounded by locked gates. If we do cross into Mexico, we go only in the day, taking a church van instead of personal cars.
¡Muchísimas gracias! In a context with much poverty and unemployment, San Lucas and Cristo Rey are both very dependent on the generosity of our mission partners and supportive donors. We are ever so grateful. Due to internet privacy concerns, we won’t list individual donors here. Besides ELCA and Synod support, we have been impacted by the munificent benevolance of so many others. Thank you!
Please remember in prayer:
- The mission and ministry of San Lucas and Cristo Rey
- The ELCA
- The Southwestern Texas Synod
- Our mission partners and prayerful supporters
- Those who receive food from our food bank
- Families traveling north for agricultural work
- Teenagers tempted by the allure of drugs
- Victims of violence on both sides of the border
- People struggling with their legal immigration status
Advent blessings,
Pastor Paul
Adapted from an Advent 2011 newsletter to friends and mission partners of San Lucas.
No Green Card for Ruth
Posted: November 3, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Last night in Bible study, we talked about the book of Ruth. It’s a beautiful story about love and commitment in the midst of famine and struggle. After their husbands had died, Ruth says to her mother-in-law Naomi before they travel together back to Naomi’s homeland of Bethlehem, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Thinking about our context here on the border, I started to wonder about something, so I double-checked in the Bible. The Bible never says that Naomi had to fill out Form I-130, Petition for an Alien Relative (http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-130.pdf) so that Ruth could travel back to Bethlehem with her. She never has to wait at the consulate, and she doesn’t need to pay a $420 filing fee.
I checked Form I-130 to see if it might be possible, if Naomi were from the United States instead of Bethlehem, for her to petition her daughter-in-law’s entry, and it appears negative. The form just has boxes for spouse, child, sibling, and parent. Naomi would not be able to have Ruth legally stay with her in the United States. The bonds of love, commitment, and relationship don’t always fit in our easy boxes.
A San Lucas Acrostic
Posted: October 31, 2011 Filed under: Context, Ministry, Spanish Leave a comment »In the past months as pastor of San Lucas, I’ve been trying to learn the context, know the people, and figure out what it means to be a Lutheran congregation on Eidson Road in Eagle Pass, Texas. Last month, we had some meetings called Encuentros para Escuchar (Encounters to Listen) where I invited parishioners to identify strengths, weaknesses, dreams, and hopes for San Lucas. I used a travelling metaphor, saying that we needed to know what kind of vehicle we’re driving before we pick a road. You don’t take a go-kart on the freeway, and you don’t drive a semi down a bike trail.
In the months and years ahead, I want to work together with the council and congregation to set some goals and do some planning for future possibilities. We need to find our path. To get us started, I’ve used some of what I’ve been hearing, combined with biblical interpretation and contextual awareness to propose a theological perspective for our identity as a congregation.
I’ve made an acrostic for the name of our congregation, San Lucas. I shared it in my sermon yesterday on Reformation Sunday, put it on a banner, and printed it out as a bulletin insert. My hope is that it will help us have conversation about who we are as a congregation and what that will look like in the future. Here it is in Spanish:
- Somos la Iglesia
- Anunciando a Cristo
- Nacidos en el Espíritu
- Luteranos en identidad
- Unidos en misión
- Cruzando fronteras
- Alimentando a nuestra comunidad
- Sin temor y sin excusas
Although the acrostic doesn’t work when translated into English, the idea is still there:
- We are the Church
- Announcing Christ
- Born in the Spirit
- Lutherans in identity
- United in mission
- Crossing borders
- Feeding our community
- Without fear or excuses
Glocal mission and cultural icebergs
Posted: September 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: culture, ministry, mission 1 Comment »I just got back from two days at ELCA Glocal Mission Event in San Antonio. Seven of us from San Lucas took the church van to learn about what it means to do mission close to home and around the world. My brain is starting to feel mushy after flipping back and forth from speaking English and Spanish.
I think it’s great to get out of our linguistic comfort zones a bit. At worship, we sang music in English, Spanish, Arabic, Indonesian, and a bunch of African languages that I’m not culturally astute to differentiate.
We had some trouble with the translation audiophones, so the people who needed translation had to sit in the back to get translation, which defeats the whole message of the event—inclusion, accompaniment, and welcome.
My biggest learning was a powerpoint slide showing an iceberg, demonstrating that most of the ice can’t be seen. Culture is like the iceberg.
We can see just a little bit on the outside, like clothing, language, and music. What we don’t always see are things like sense of time, child-rearing techniques, and greeting customs.
As a white pastor serving a Hispanic/Latino congregation, I’m in the process of learning many of these hidden cultural things. For example, here on the border, it is very polite to greet every person individually with a handshake, hug, or even a kiss, upon entering a room. In my white, Midwestern, Scandinavian background, it’s perfectly fine to walk into a room, say, “Hi, everybody” to the whole group and continue on. That would be rude here.
I also have a pretty wide personal space area. I’m not a hugger, but I’m slowly learning to be. Culturally here, it is very appropriate to pat a child on the head when coming or going. For a pastor, I should probably give a blessing. This is somewhat out of my comfort zone. I’ve had enough boundary training in light of clergy sexual abuse scandals to be weary of touching anybody, especially a child. I’ve also known too many African American women who have been majorly offended when white people get fascinated with their hair. I don’t really want to touch anybody’s hair, just to be safe.
I’m glad that some parishioners came. Now we have the shared image of the iceberg. From now on, when we run into one of those cultural differences in our life together, I can say explain the iceberg image, and we can name and claim those differences.
Drugs, praying, and church
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: Ministry, Texas Leave a comment »The August issue of Texas Monthly features an eye-opening article about teens smuggling drugs across the Mexican border from Piedras Negras. In the last eighteen months, 104 teens have been arrested in Eagle Pass with more than fifty pounds of marijuana each.
In my conversations with folks in the wider church, especially with those from mission partner congregations and potential mission partners thinking of visiting us at San Lucas, the most common question I hear is, “Is it safe?”
I personally feel relatively safe. Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras have not had nearly the major volume of violence that has terrorized other border communities, especially Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, and Reynosa. However, whenever I pick up a copy of the local Eagle Pass News Gram, it seems the headline is almost always about another drug arrest on the bridge.
From San Lucas, we continue to cross the border every week to worship at Cristo Rey. I generally follow a few guidelines to help insure safety:
• Travel with at least one other person, preferably a native Spanish speaker.
• Go directly to church.
• Be back in the United States before dark.
• Use the church van instead of personal cars.
There is no denying that there is risk in ministry here. But isn’t there risk everywhere? Upon reading in Texas Monthly about so many young people taking major risks, I start to wonder. I wonder how many kids from our Vacation Bible School have families impacted by narcotraffic.
This week I heard the chief of the Eagle Pass Police Department speak to the Rotary Club, and he said that children as young as third grade have been caught with drugs at the elementary schools. I don’t really have easy answers to all of this. In Eagle Pass, there are drugs, but there’s also lots of poverty, unemployment, and under employment.
At San Lucas, we have a strong food bank that helps people with immediate hunger issues. I’m in the process of building a collection of business cards for agencies to which we can refer people for different forms of assistance. I’d love to eventually explore some congregational-based community organizing to address some of the root causes of the poverty here.
We can organize; we can advocate; we can give out food and start programs. This is all good stuff, but really what we need to do is be present. Prayer is advocacy. It might be a lot easier to be pastor in a different place. It might be more financially responsible for synods and congregations to put their money and prayers elsewhere. Where there’s violence, that’s where the Church should be. When there is poverty and despair, the Church should be present.
I hope that’s what we’re doing at San Lucas and Cristo Rey. On August 21, just before school starts, we’re going to have a special Blessing of the Students at San Lucas. We’ll also pass out school supplies collected by one of our mission partner congregations and surround the young people of our congregation and community with prayers for safety and wisdom as they begin a new school year.
Prayer in the midst of uncertainty is part of our usual practice. Week after week, we usually include in our prayers a petition not unlike this:
O Dios, oremos por los victimas de drogas, violencia, y guerras. Oremos por paz en este mundo. Favor de darnos un espíritu de justicia y hospitalidad para que podamos ser instrumentos de su paz. Señor, en tu bondad, escucha nuestra oración. Amen.
O God, we pray for victims of drugs, violence, and war. We pray for peace in this world. Please give to us a spirit of justice and hospitality so that we may be instruments of your peace. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Amen.
Iowa-Texas connection!
Posted: July 26, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Here’s an article from the newsletter of the SE Iowa Synod (my home synod) about the relationship between several Iowa congregations and Lutherans here on the border:
http://www.seiasynod.org/newsweekofjuly21.html
Migrant Ministry
Posted: June 24, 2011 Filed under: Context, Ministry, Texas 1 Comment »I’ve been told that in the summer months, worship attendance will go down here at San Lucas. More than a few families from Eagle Pass travel al norte in order to work. People who live in Texas will go to places like Minnesota or Wisconsin to do tough agricultural work like picking sugar beets or working in canning factories. Most leave some time in June, and come back in the Fall. This is one reason, along with scalding heat, that we have Vacation Bible School right away the first week in June. I don’t know numbers for sure, but I’ve heard that a quarter to a third of Eagle Pass residents leave in the summer for work.
I wonder–how can our congregation minister to these people, especially when they are far away? Every Sunday, we’ve been praying for los trabajadores. When I know it is a family’s last Sunday in worship, I have done a special blessing of farewell and godspeed. It’s too late to get something planned for this year, but I’ve been thinking about some sort of special worship service of blessing to send people out with the prayers and support of the community. Maybe this could even be done ecumenically with other local churches.
I’ve thought about sending care packages, but people don’t often know what their address will be until they find a place to live. It would also be ideal to try to connect with other congregations to help our families in diaspora. It’s not like there’s no shortage of Lutherans in the Upper Midwest.
One problem is that people are scattered. It is not the case that people from Eagle Pass all go to the same town; we have people near Moorhead, Rochester, Madison, Green Bay. I’ve asked some of my members who travel if they have been able to connect with Lutheran churches where they go. The common response is that they usually have to work very long hours, even on Sundays, so they don’t get to church easily. Additionally, it is hard to find Spanish-speaking Lutherans, especially in rural areas. One woman told me she went to a Lutheran church in Minnesota that was puro norteamericano. However, one man said that a Lutheran pastor in Wisconsin would bless the cars of the workers before they travel.
When I hear these stories of people traveling for work, I can’t help but think of Biblical narratives, and all the folks that travel in the Bible. Abram and Sarai get up and go to a new place. Joseph’s brothers go to Egypt during a time of famine. In a foreign land, Ruth gleans in the fields of Boaz. Israelites remember Zion by the waters of Babylon. Escaping the tyranny of Herod, the Holy Family finds rest on the way to Egypt. My prayer is that in all of our journeys, Christ might travel with us.
Preaching in Spanish
Posted: May 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »These past monts, as I’ve been preparing to preach each week, I’ve noticed that my preaching has changed. The biggest difference is that I am preaching in Spanish. Though still not perfect, it has definitely improved since March. I do sometimes still stumble as I wonder if a verb should be preterite or imperfect. I’m learning vocabularly more appropriate on the border–different from the Iberian textbook Spanish or the Nuevayorquino phrases I picked up on internship.
Most notably, however, preaching in my non-native language has helped me be more biblical. Preaching in English, I have a pretty good command at being creative with words and sentences. I have a grasp at popular culture, and have included quotations and references to all sorts of novels, movies and internet memes. I just can’t do that in Spanish. I don’t know lots of puns in Spanish. I don’t watch enough Univision to make clever connections between some deep thelogical concept and an episode from a telenovela.
If I were preaching this weekend in English, with the story of the stoning of Steven and Peter’s living stones, I would rock. I would make a few geology jokes. It would be gneiss and you wouldn’t take it for granite.
I can’t do that in Spanish. I don’t have the language skills to make puns, and I’m still learning a lot about cultural stuff. If I were to quote a John Denver song or a Morgan Freeman movie, or Dr. Seuss story, my congregation might not have any frame of reference with it. I’m still trying learn the experience here.
The one thing that we do have in common is the biblical story. Rather than trying to fluff up a sermon with cute pop culture references, I simply stay with the Bible. In the ELCA, there’s been lots of talk recently about the Bible as “the first language of faith.” Even though my congregation and I come from very different backgrounds, we share an encounter with God’s word. As we study and proclaim it together, we enter into that old, old story.
More web presence
Posted: May 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted here. I’ve been busy with ministry stuff: Holy Week, Synod Assembly, and starting to think about VBS. There are a few more ways to keep connected about life at San Lucas:
Our new web page: www.sanlucaseaglepass.org
Like us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Iglesia-Luterana-San-Lucas/145020762236804
