theologies as a network of support and sustenance to our people. God is fundamental to our people and we have this gift and this demand to help our people, with our people, to create knowledge, discourses and practices of faith that will defy the maddening and destruction of our communities. So, our theological work is unique.
Our theological work is filled with ambiguities and contradictions. But we don’t shy away from it! We don’t try to even it out or cut the edges so we can create a good proper European theology. Our theologies are broken, nonsensical, ridiculous, outrageous. Half sophisticated, half old fashion. Half written, half spoken. Half conscious, half unconscious. Half clear, half obscure. Half tears, half laughter. Half discourse, half songs. Half academic, half something else, whatever the fuck we want! We do what we want! Don’t tell us what to do or not to do. We know it! The problem is that the academy might not consider it proper because we live in the midst of a magical realism. So, go figure us out! Usted estan todos despistados.
In our theologies, we decolonize the content, the format, the procedures, and the establishment of theological and religious thinking. We dress the way we want and we continue to be scholars. We call on different voices and nobody knows. We draw maps for the feast14 that the gringos read y se preguntan: Estan locos estes cucarachas? Que estan haciendo?
They don’t know that our laughter is like the redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ himself a laughter out of place. We are also homo ridiculous! That kind of ridiculous way of living/thinking that troubles the status quo. We console by laughing and admonish by crying. Our accent is our resistance, our smiling faces our gentle dismissal. We are a ball of incongruences and complexities because our lives are incongruent to this white system of thinking; our complexity comes from a mixture of people, sources, images and practices.
Tears and joys compose the main sources of the Latinxs communities. We preach and pray when we write our theologies and when do theology when we pray and preach. Our ears are attached to the ground, and our people matter more than our ideas. We see our people’s brutal suffering; we see the thin line of our social fabric being destroyed faster than ever. We are at the edge of despair every single day. We hang on a thin rope over the abyss. Nonetheless, our tortillas and tamales, our singing and our fiestas will keep us going. As a Mexican avuela used to say: Satanas quieres que desaparescas! But we won’t! We will take our place in this world and continue! For we carry the esperanza transgressora de Oscar Romero. We carry and produce theologies that pulse life in the midst of death, that mark and show the ambivalences of life and death from our people’s main structures of life; namely, a life lived within utter necessities and demanding hopes, continuing disasters and ongoing faith, tears and pain, but also joyful songs of alegria. As the poet Geraldo Eustáquio de Souza said:
Giving up . . . I’ve seriously thought about it but never really took myself seriously,
I have more ground in my eyes than the fatigue in my legs,
more hope in my footsteps, than sadness on my shoulders,
more road in my heart than fear in my head.15
Living for us is a practice of resurrection! For we are seeds! Keep finding people and communities and places where your seed can resurrect! Find the reservoirs of life and give water to your people. Bring matter to what matters. Bring to life what does not matter. Speak beyond positivistic structures, speak and write in ways that go beyond the object/subject relation.
Concluding . . .
We now must come back to the words of Jesus.
“You see all these buildings, these policies, this brutality, this empire, do you not?
Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
Meanwhile, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Do not give up! Don’t fall into desperation! Because “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” This is just the end.
‘Then they will hand our familias over to be tortured and will put them and you to death
Many 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
