I've decided to post all of the discussions of the peasant theologians of Solentiname on the Christmas narratives of the Bible over the next few days.
The pregnant Mary had gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who also was pregnant, Elizabeth congratulated her because she would be the other of the Messiah, and Mary broke out singing that song. It is a song to the poor. The people of Nicaragua have been very fond of reciting it. It is the favorite prayer of the poor, and superstitious campesinos often carry it as an amulet. In the time of old Somoza when the campesinos were required always to carry with them proof that they had voted for him, the people jokingly called that document the Magnificat.
Now young ESPERANAZA read this poem, and the women began to comment on it.
My soul praises the Lord, my heart rejoices in God my Savior, because he has noticed his slave.
"She praises God because the Messiah is going to be born, and that's a great event for the people."
"She calls God "Savior" because she knows that the Son that he has given her is going to bring liberation."
"She's full of joy. Us women must also be that way, because in our community the Messiah is born too, the liberator."
Talk about the incredible audacity of the Gospel, the thing which has been covered up by wealthy establishments and their governments and, in the modern era, what has been discouraged by the scientistic educational establishment which, even when it produces a class of would-be secular revolutionaries, props up the same established order through discouraging such audacious thinking.*
"She recognizes liberation . . . . We have to do the same thing. Liberation is from sin, that is, from selfishness, from injustice, from misery, from ignorance - from everything that's oppressive. That liberation is in our wombs too, it seems to me . . . "
The last speaker was ANDREA, a young married woman, and now O SCAR, her young husband breaks in: "God is selfish because he wants us to be his slaves. He wants our submission. Just him. I don't see why Mary has to call herself a slave. We should be free! Why just him? That's selfishness.
ALEJANDRO, who is a bachelor: "We have to be slaves of God, not of men."
I said that it's true that this selfish God Oscar spoke about does exist. And it's a God invented by people. People have often invented a god in their own image and likeness - not the true God, but idols, and those religions are alienating, like opium of the people. But the God of the Bible does not teach religion, but rather he urges Moses to take Israel out of Egypt, where the Jews were working as slaves. He led them from colonialism to liberty. And later God ordered that among those people no one could hold another as a slave, because they had been freed by him belonged only to him, which means they were free.
And TERESITA, William's wife: "We have to keep in mind that at the time when Mary said she was a slave, slavery existed. It exists today too, but with a different name. Now the slaves are the proletariat or the campesinos. When she called herself a slave, Mary brought herself closer to the oppressed, I think. Today she would have called herself a proletarian or a campesina of Solentiname."
And WILLIAM: "But she says she's a slave of the Lord (who is the Liberator, who is the one who brought freedom from the Egyptian slavery). It's as if she said she was a slave of the liberation. Or as if she said she was a proletarian or a revolutionary campesina."
Another of the girls: "She says she's poor, and she says that God took into account the "poverty of his slave," that is that God chose her because she was poor. He didn't choose a queen or a lady of high society but a woman from the people. Yes, because God has preferred us poor people. Those are the "great things" that God has done, as Mary says."
And from now on all generations will call me happy, for Mighty God has done great things for me. His name is holy, and his love reaches his faithful ones from generation to generation.
One of the ladies: "She says that people will call her happy . . . . . She feels happy because she is the mother of Jesus the Liberator, and because she also is a liberator like her son, because she understood her son and did not oppose his mission. She didn't oppose him, unlike other mothers of young people who are messiahs, liberators of their communities. That was her great merit, I say."
And another: "She says that God is holy, and that means "just." The just person who doesn't offend anybody, the one who doesn't commit any injustices. God is like this and we should be like him."
I said that was a perfect biblical definition of the holiness of God**. And then I asked what a holy society would be.
"The one we are seeking," LAURENAO answered at once. He is a young man who talks of the Revolution or revolutionaries almost every time he comments on the Bible. After a brief pause he added: "The one that revolutionaries want to build, all the revolutionaries of the world."
* I seldom read Twitter feeds but the one by Monjula Ray @queerBengali which lists such elite "revolutionary" prescription that is a guarantee to remain stuck in futility came to my notice yesterday.
** The God of the Bible is the strangest thing about the whole Bible. He is the only one of his kind. In all the history of religion, there is no other like him. And that is hard to understand. So the people who dealt with him in the Bible always wanted to relate to him as though he were like all other notions of God. And in every time, even ours, we are tempted to force him into other categories as though he belongs to a species of similar agents.
But he is not like any other. And his strangeness is in this He is with his people He is for his people His goodness is not in his great transcendental power nor in his majestic remoteness nor in his demanding toughness but in his readiness to be with and for his people. And his being with and for is not a matter of bribery or deception or intimidation. He simply wills it so. He is not, in his characteristic way, by himself. He is for others.
Walter Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense Chapter 4 The Center of the Odd Perspective of the Bible – God
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