"Where's the Hope? - Meeting Jesus in Guatemala"
Ross Starkson
Sunday, November 21st 2004

Good morning St. Joan!

It’s a great privilege and pleasure to be here talking to you today. Today we celebrate with those who want to deepen their bond to our family here at St. Joan of Arc. We also acknowledge and celebrate the global Church by recalling the special Sister Parish relationship we have with St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Tierra Nueva 2, Guatemala. As you may recall, eight parishioners traveled there this past August to deepen the relationship we have with the folks there and to learn from them about what it means to be Christian in this world. My wife Katharine and I were part of that group.

The other people on the delegation were:

• Mindy Ahler-Olmsted - our fearless and hardworking leader,
• Jenny Linane - who has a gift for building relationships with children,
• Joel Papa - who is a lot of fun to be around,
• Michael Brannigan - who does hilarious imitations of animals,
• Ann Maczuga - who somehow managed to keep any of us from getting lost and
• Brianna Connors - who makes friends instantly and is Ann’s daughter.

To set the stage for the realities we were to encounter our first stop was the National Cemetery in Guatemala City. Even there the distance between the rich and the poor was clear. If you’re poor you get a common vault for a limited time and, if your family doesn’t pay the monthly rent, your remains will be thrown into the nearby public dump sooner rather than later. If you’re rich you can afford to build a monument with stylish vaults for the whole family. They will be waiting there to keep you and your loved ones secure even after death. We soon found ourselves asking each other, “Where’s the hope?”

We spent time sharing stories with the families we stayed with and enjoyed studying scripture together, planning the future of our hermanamiento [sister parish relationship] together, playing together (including a wonderful game of basketball), praying together and marching in a Peace March together in Guatemala City.

We felt the love of our sisters and brothers in Tierra Nueva 2 in so many ways. We experienced the warmth of their hospitality. We saw the way they responded with love and understanding when we made the inevitable gringo blunders. We were overcome by gratitude with the way they responded with care and concern when they perceived some threat to our safety. We made life-long friends, or more accurately - we have become family.

We also shared their pain and the pain of other places in Guatemala. We listened to the stories of loss and violence during the 36 year long war and cried. We knelt in the Peace Park in Santiago, Atitlán without words to express the depth of our feelings. We saw where Padre Alfonso was killed. We saw where Father Stanley Rother was killed. We listened to stories of injustice and felt anger and frustration.

We stood in awe at the beauty of the land:

• The incredible green mountains,
• Lake Atitlán, and
• The volcanoes that stand guard everywhere.

Our last Mass together in Tierra Nueva 2 was on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15th. The Gospel reading that day was the story of the Visitation, the story of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth when Mary was pregnant with Jesus and Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist. When Elizabeth saw Mary, the baby John jumped for joy in her womb. Mary responded with the Magnificat, a wonderful song of dreams for justice that she knew would be the legacy of her child’s life. Like Mary, we long for the Kingdom together with our sisters and brothers in Guatemala while we rejoice, together, in the signs of the Kingdom around us. We hold dreams in our hearts that, like children, wait to be born into the light of reality - dreams of justice, equality, freedom from hunger and poverty. We all hold these dreams in our hearts like a mother carries her child soon to be born.

Our visit to Tierra Nueva 2 was more that a visit, it was a Visitation - like Mary and Elizabeth. Didn’t we feel our hearts and our dreams, our children, leap for joy like the child in Elizabeth’s womb? Didn’t we feel the excitement that, together, we could be so much more than we are separately? Our dreams got stronger and bolder in the warmth of our being together.

Where could we find the hope? We had been surrounded by the realities of Guatemala for almost ten days before we celebrated that Mass together. Dare we believe and rejoice, like Mary, that our dreams will be born into the light of day? She expressed her dream in the Magnificat. Dare we believe, with her, that violence will be overcome by peace? Dare we believe that hunger will cease to be? Can we believe that poverty will also disappear? Dare we hope that the plans of the powerful will come to nothing? Is it possible that justice will, in fact, come?

The first reading on that Feast of the Assumption painted the picture of a woman clothed with stars that agonized to give birth. A great Dragon was waiting to devour the child as soon as it was born. How can we dare believe that our dreams will become reality? The Dragon is waiting to devour the Child of our dreams as soon as it is born. The Dragon has tread heavily on everything - the people, the land - everything. It has swept many stars from the sky - we knelt at their graves at the Peace Park and in the cemetery. How can we dare to believe?

But that is the promise Mary believed in. That is the promise God has given us in Jesus. In Guatemala we came to realize that we are able to look beyond the Dragon because we have each other.

We could dare to believe in our dreams because, with Mary, we all shared a common dream - the coming of the Kingdom. We could believe because our sisters and brothers gave us hope. We saw Jesus there in that place. We felt the Child of our dreams leap for joy because we came to know each other. Together we could believe that the Child of Justice will come, and indeed, was there, in that place, in and with us.

In Tierra Nueva 2 we felt the energy of our common dreams. The time had come to begin the labor that would give birth to them. The Dragon could not prevail. The Child would be born and God would protect and nourish it. We came home energized.

Well, that brings us to the heart of south Minneapolis on the Feast of Christ the King. This is the last Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year. Our sisters and brothers making the journey through the RCIA are entering a new phase of their pilgrimage. As a church community we are about to enter the season of Advent where we will come face to face with our hopes and dreams for the future - these children of our passion for justice.

It’s a long way from Jesus about to be born to his hanging on the cross. Today’s gospel reading is a surprising one - Christ the King on a cross. Jesus is drawing reactions from the crowd and even from two others hanging from their own crosses on either side. My friends, I can say with absolute conviction that I have met this Jesus in Guatemala. A Jesus crucified but still full of hope for the future, full of love and with a remarkable passion for justice.

There are several ways to react to this crucified Jesus. Like the crowd we can say to this Jesus, “If you are king, save your self!” Or perhaps, in other words it would sound more like, “Be competitive in the world market with the “help” of free trade agreements!” “Quit playing the victim and decide to succeed!” “Get a job!” Never mind that the infrastructure isn’t sufficiently developed to make the competition fair. Never mind that 36 years of war and 200,000 deaths have had their impact on the psyche of almost every indigenous family in the country while the wealthy seem to be in denial. Never mind that it takes so much time and energy just to survive that there just isn’t any time for a “real” job. “Save yourself and us!” Remarkable. That’s one way to respond to the suffering Jesus.

There is another way to respond to this Jesus. We can say, “Jesus, we are in this boat together. You, especially, don’t deserve to be hanging here. Remember us as we travel down this road together!” We feel powerless to control the economic and social developments that control us. But I remember how our dreams stirred for joy when we first met each other, this Jesus and us. I remember the hope and the excitement that sometimes wouldn’t let us sleep. We were surprised by the realization that the experience of meeting this Jesus changed us into different people.

We can never turn back. This indelible change has forever altered our world. Suddenly the hopelessness turns into hope. We feel more truly alive. We are called to recognize that this Jesus we met is not who He appears to be. We are called to learn from Him how to be more fully human. We are called to be the world’s passion for justice and to accompany Jesus on the journey. We are called to give birth to our dreams - the children of our passion for justice.

People of St. Joan of Arc, you are a sign of hope. I see Jesus in this place. Here and now. On behalf of those whose lives have been changed because of you, thank you for giving birth to your dreams.